


Going Off The Deep End

by gala_apples



Series: The Loverboy Diet [1]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Dom/sub, Established Relationship, First Dates, Homophobia, M/M, Other: See Story Notes, Pre-OT6 - Freeform, Subdrop, Under-negotiated Kink, Urban Fantasy, Victim Blaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 04:16:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 36,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3235907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael’s pretty happy with his life choices. Dating a journeyman magician? Cool. Dating a college student? Excellent. Dating both of them at the same time, coming out, and getting thrown from the house? Great. </p><p>The problem is when Michael gets hexed. In that one moment all his choices get taken away from him. That? Not fantastic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tuesday

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has Michael emancipated from emotionally abusive and intolerant parents. I have purposely done zero research on his RL family and siblings, because that's my personal RPF line in the sand. I don't even know their names. Anything I've written about them is surely not true.
> 
> Everyone's above the age of consent in this fic, but there are some high school/college relationships, and it's implied this relationship has gone on a while.
> 
> This fic also has non-con magical curses leading to non-con kissing.

Michael doesn’t know what it is about his strip mall. The large tan building is split into five stores, with enough parking lot to host a travelling carnival. And he’d fucking _swear_ it was cursed, if consecration wasn’t the first task of any realtor worth their business card.

His store is the leftmost store- a smoothie joint. Can it really be called a restaurant if the only thing available to order are cups of pulverised fruit? Ryan says they’ve got a five star score in the restaurant section of Yelp, which would be good if Michael gave two shits about marketing. He doesn’t. The only thing he cares about is that he’s been working at Sweet Pulp long enough that he’s got seniority on anyone except the assistant manager. If shit goes down and sales dip it won’t be him they ‘let go’.

It’s impossible to not view low sales as a threat. Not when the other four stores in the strip mall are in constant flux. Nothing any other store carries seems to sell, and each closes down every few months. Michael’s witnessed it all, from Dollar Trees to candle stores to accounting firms, and nothing’s ever worked. It’s a steady cycle; grand opening becomes temporarily normal sales becomes increasingly desperate attempts to push product becomes liquidation sales becomes empty store becomes some optimistic eyed small business owner being shown the property. The only business Michael’s seen with a run of any length was a massage parlour, and _that_ got shut down by the police.

Years ago, way before Michael became a fresh eyed and fruit adoring new employee, a betting pool started. Apparently the dive business thing has been going on nearly a decade now. He didn’t throw money into the pot back then, too interested in saving up for a car. He sure as hell doesn’t have a single spare cent these days, thanks to the shitbag nature of certain people. Still, it’s become second nature to develop an opinion, like the fisherman’s cap wearing old men who know every stat about every horse at the track, but don’t buy a ticket. He always gives his opinion to Lindsay. She’s a go big or go home kind of gambler and Michael likes her enough to want her to win it all.

The newest place is a grocery store. It’s probably artisanal or organic or some shit. The store doesn’t even have an English name. Michael knocks off a few points off his mental tally right there. If it’s not easy to Google or Mapquest the longevity goes down considerably. He can’t scope out the inside until tomorrow -his dinner break is twenty five minutes and he’s not wasting a minute of that standing on his feet- but promises to text Lindsay his thoughts. All bets have to be in within forty eight hours of Grand Opening. 

Michael’s shift is over at ten. Michael clocks out at ten fifteen, because some asshats think it’s funny to buy half a dozen smoothies at two minutes to ten, and when you’re working with the assistant manager you can’t tell the asshats to fuck off the way you normally might. Hypothetically speaking. Michael’s never gotten a write up for being rude to customers, which is as good as saying he never has been. 

After the machine beeps to let him know it’s done with him Michael tucks his keycard into its slot in his wallet. Most of his membership cards shift around at random, but his clock-card has a dedicated spot. He needs it every day, and the cheap assholes charge five bucks for a replacement. That done, he can finally leave Sweet Pulp. So long, sayonara, and see you tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, rinse and fucking repeat. He’ll be working here for at least a year past graduation, if not longer.

The late exit fucks up Michael’s schedule. He’s missed his bus, and the next isn’t due for thirty five minutes. In the general scheme of things he’d be pissed. He’d probably keyboard mash at Gavin and Ryan until the bus pulled up. Tonight it’s not really a problem. The grocery store with the weirdest name in the world is still open, Michael can see lights through the cluttered window. If he heads in now he doesn’t have to go before work tomorrow, which means he can use that twenty minutes between bus arrival and shift start for something else. Homework, even, maybe.

Fuck it. Pseudo-gambling it is!

Mggrlnfluger, or however you pronounce the auto-correct stumper word on the sign, is decorated in teals. Not that a lot of wall is showing, there are too many shelves for that. But the laminate floor is patterned in squares of white and teal, and the ceiling is a lighter shade of it.

The groceries are incredibly cheap. Suspiciously cheap. Not caring that the lone cashier is eyeballing him, Michael picks up random items and checks the expiry dates. The most obvious explanation for the bottom dollar prices is that everything is old; bread hard and cereal stale and chocolate with that weird whitish film. But everything he looks at is fine. The milk’s got two weeks left. The prepackaged garden salad isn’t browning. The cans aren’t dubiously bulging.

Michael doesn’t get it, but he’s not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Or rather, he’ll look it in the mouth once, but he won’t continue staring like he’s a goddamn orthodontist. Here he can afford more than rice and cold cuts. He doesn’t really care if that’s because this place is a front for a cartel or something. He’s just going to go with it. 

There’s not a lot of money on his card. He knows exactly how much is on his card. There’s not a lot. He paid rent last paycheck. Michael always pays for rent first, because having walls and water and air conditioning is important to him. It’s easy to mooch food, and AT&T loves him enough to let payments slide for data, but if he’s evicted before June under a bridge is about his only option.

Still, with the ridiculous prices of consonant-vomit’s food, he’s able to get some variety in his diet. Nothing brand name, but who the fuck needs Campbell soup or Sunrype juice when you can have Orwin soup and Passion juice? Michael gave up caring about anything except not getting scurvy mere weeks after getting kicked out. About the same time he had to buy his own groceries for the first time.

It’s a pain in the ass to get everything back to his apartment. The bus isn’t that bad, although he does get glares for being the asshole who takes up two seats. It’s coiling the plastic handles of a dozen bags around his palms and walking the two blocks from the bus stop to the apartment complex that sucks. Michael doesn’t dare shift his grip in the elevator. As much as the handles are cutting in, they’re also stretching from the weight of the food inside them. The last thing he needs is for one to rip apart when he’s not even on his floor.

There’s a satisfaction in having full cupboards. Well, more specifically, the food cupboard is filled. The kitchen side of the studio apartment has four upper cabinets and four lower ones, and that’s it for storage. Dishes, pans and pots, cutlery, towels, cleaning shit; it all has to fit under the counter. Still, Michael isn’t usually able to fill his fridge and his upper cupboards. He almost wants to take a selfie of it. The only thing that stops him is the idea of the next time Ryan and Gavin are over, surprising them by telling them to go get a snack. Normally they bring their own and no one really talks about it. They’ve all had exactly one conversation featuring the word _burden_ , and fucking never again, if Michael has anything to say about it. Offering his boys pretzels and soda will be a fantastic change of pace.

Michael considers his bed. It’s nudging close to midnight, and the alarm goes off at seven so he can shower, eat and get homework done. He stops considering it about three seconds later, because for the first time since being kicked out he can actually have a bedtime snack without having to figure out what future meal he’s taking the food from.

The scent of tomato and cheese fills up the apartment. It’s not Chef Boyardee ABC’s, but it’s suing-for-copyright-infringement identical in flavour. The bowl of it is down to red streaky dregs across the bottom when his cell buzzes with a text.

 **tuckin’ myself in. Wish you were here** A picture pops up next. Gavin’s nearly entirely under a pile of blankets, only the arm needed for taking selfies bared.

 **yeah boi** Michael manages to sleep with his boyfriends together about once a week, separately one or two more times. He’d do it every night if he could. He’s got big plans for the future, but they all rely on graduating.

**don’t check the mail I’ll do it next time I come over**

**no that’s fine**

Gavin sends something else, but Michael promptly ignores him. Instead he clatters down the fourteen flights of stairs that right angle spiral to make seven stories. It’s half attempt to wear himself out so he doesn’t feel what’s coming, half stalling tactic. He could stall completely and actually let Gavin do it, but he won’t. That’s weak. Michael’s not weak.

When Michael gets to the ground floor he’s alone among the wide wall of tiny numbered doors. Good. No delicate ears to overhear his swearing. He won’t be able to hit anything, there’s an anti-property damage spell on the lobby and front lawn, but cracking a knuckle on the metal wall isn’t in the plans anyway.

The letter’s there, once he gets the key twisted. Of course it is. She writes every Sunday. When it arrives depends on the postal system, but it’s never later than Thursday. Ryan’s told him to ask the carrier to not bother to deliver anything from Melissa Jones, but Michael hasn’t, and Ryan hasn’t gone behind his back yet. Yet. Michael wouldn’t be surprised if his older boyfriend one day does, and that will be an awful week, because at the end of it he’ll have to ask if Ryan intervened, or if his mother gave up, stopped caring.

Michael jams his thumb into the open space at the end of the envelope and yanks upwards. Three more times and the envelope is open, if mangled.

The stationery is pink.

_Michael,_

_I wish I could put dear in front of your name. I am your mother, and I wish that you could be the healthy boy I and your father raised, that your brothers looked out for. I wish you knew how to obey the rules we set for you. I wish you knew that those rules weren’t, AREN’T meant to hurt you or stifle you, that they’re an extension of what the Lord needs from you. I_

The words on the page are interrupted by the _whir-thump_ of the elevator doors sliding open. Michael looks up from the loving cruelty to see who’s coming. Morrison Tower isn’t exactly full of upstanding individuals. There’s a reason the glass doors of the lobby are spelled bulletproof. If it’s someone that’s likely to start shit, Michael has to figure out how to act to avoid it.

He’s seen the man around before. Michael doesn’t know his name, but he’s seen him, and he’s _looked_ , because how could he not? The guy’s white but a lot of that landscape is covered in tattoos, the shaped moustache taking him way past potentially thuggish to quirky. Tall, skinny, brunette, relaxed expression. In short, hot as hell. Not that Gavin and Ryan don’t get him going, but this is the kind of guy Michael imagined while jerking off, half sick with shame, telling himself he wasn’t gay if he didn’t fantasize about anyone from Real Life.

Something in Michael breaks. Some combination of the letter in his hand, the fucking anguish he’s never really able to move on from since it’s rehashed every week, the resentful pride of being who he is, the Ultimate Gay Fantasy in front of him- the levy of rationality collapses.

The man is digging his mailbox key out of his pocket when Michael grabs him. The paper in his hand crinkles as he clutches the stranger’s arm, his left hand curled lightly into the stranger’s t-shirt. Michael kisses him, slips a tongue past shocked lips and tastes only the spice of his own pasta sauce.

He disengages as soon as his brain reboots. It’s too late, of course. The man is staring at him, confused with a side order of pissed.

“What the hell?”

“She writes- It’s a turn your back on the homosexual sin lifestyle and come to God letter. I just...” Michael trails off, shrugs. What else is there to say? It’s not like he’s got an excuse. He would have been better off punching the wall, honestly.

“Whoever she is can fuck right off. _Right_ off. I’m a magician. Is she from here? I’ll curse your mailbox so anything with a Texas zip code bursts into flames. You’d miss out on pizza coupons, but-”

“No, it’s fine. Fuck. Sorry, fucking seriously. I don’t know how I just lost control like that, I know it’s not-”

The man claps his hand on Michael’s shoulder. “You are not the first queer kid to make a poor life choice.” He smirks. “Hint, Republican cops forced to keep protesters in line at a pride parade or lose their job don’t really like being groped.”

Michael barks out a laugh. The idea of it is funny, if not the aftermath of this hot -and apparently queer- guy getting beat up by a closet case cop.

“I’ll get my mail, you go back to your home and we’ll both forget about it. And throw that crap in the trash!” the man finishes, angrily gesturing at the half balled letter.

Michael follows the orders. He takes the elevator this time, but he heads directly back to 708 and drops the letter in the shallow bucket he keeps in the mostly useless cabinet that houses the sink basin. If it doesn’t get covered by the next time Gav comes over he’ll end up plucking it out and lighting it on fire. Michael knows he will. He also knows Gavin won’t give him shit for not delegating the mail task to him, and that he’ll keep on offering.

He shuffles out of his socks and kicks his work pants in the general direction of his backpack. Then he sits on the edge of the mattress and drops his head into his hands. 

Well, shit. Fuckity fuck, what’s he supposed to do now? He can’t just go to bed. He’ll feel like shit. Gavin might not carry any charms about lying -really, who’d be stupid enough to want only stark truth in high school?- but he’ll notice if Michael’s acting shifty. And Michael knows he won’t be able to act normal, not with something like this resting on his shoulders.

Gavin’s in bed, Michael’s got the photographic proof of that. Ryan will be up. Ryan wouldn’t be the first person Michael’d want to talk to about this. When Ryan gets pissed Ryan gets give-me-a-shovel-you’ll-never-find-him pissed. But he can’t go to bed thinking about how he’s going to hide this, least of all because he knows he’ll fail. Michael's never done this before, never gone outside their relationship for anything. It doesn't sit well, now that it's over and done.

Ryan picks up on the second ring. Before he can so much as say hello Michael blurts out “I kissed a guy.”

“I’ll assume that’s not you butchering Katy Perry and also that the guy wasn’t Gav?”

“I lost my damn mind,” Michael groans.

“No no, I’m the crazy, _you’re_ the mad,” Ryan replies.

“Dude, I’m not joking.”

“I didn’t say that you were.”

“I was in the lobby and-”

“You don’t need to explain.”

But Michael does. Ryan doesn’t sound furious, he sounds amused, and Michael needs to make sure his boyfriend gets it. “I started reading the perils of homosexuality letter and then there was this guy and I just-”

“Dude, stop. We’re us, and it’s real. But that’s not all about monogamy. We both know Gavin’s probably fucking around with his guardian, even if he won’t tell us shit about that side of his life. I’m a theatre major. If you have to make out with some hot neighbour to get your mother out of your head, go for it.”

“It’s that easy? You don’t think Gav will be pissed?” Michael hadn’t thought so five minutes ago, but now that the world has gone topsy turvy and Ryan doesn’t want to murder him, maybe Gavin will have changed personalities too.

“Did you not hear what I just said? He’s the journeyman banging his master. He wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.”

“Yeah.” Which isn’t entirely an answer. Just because it would be hypocritical doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

“Look, I’ll text him about it for you if one kiss is really up your ass that high,” Ryan sighs.

“Yeah.” That would probably be better. If Gavin gets pissy Michael knows he’ll get defensive, and that quickly turns into anger, which Gavin usually happily accepts and is entertained by, except in cases when he’s irritated himself.

“You’re calling late,” Ryan remarks, a blatant change of topic Michael chooses to not comment on. Better time complaints than extending the cheating-not-cheating conversation, or the what-was-in-the-letter-this-time conversation.

“Yeah, my entire night got postponed by six smoothies ordered fifty nine seconds before ten.”

“Bastards,” Ryan snarls into the phone. Michael’s not stupid, he’s aware Ryan’s hamming it up for him. He likes it anyway. Sarcastic support is still support when it gives him a steady platform to rant on.

“They weren’t even stoned. Stoners I could forgive, because when your brain is permanently fried time means less. It was a handful of little prick twelve year olds who thought they were hot shit because they were riding skateboards after dark. If that’s the next generation, kill me now.”

“You realise generations are like twenty years long. You are the generation.” 

“Don’t give me your nonsense logic!”


	2. Wednesday

It’s always a bitch to wake up. Michael’s not a morning person, and he only occasionally gets the eight hours recommended by the National Sleep Foundation, so mornings aren’t fun. That said, he’s got a routine down to minimize the agony.

Step one is an alarm that understands his soul. Alarm clocks are the instruments of Satan, that Michael is sure of. The repetitive blare sounds more like jarring laughter than anything else, like it’s mocking him for having to get up. Thank fuck it’s 2014. He’s got an iPhone, and iPhones have apps up the ass, ten different variations on every theme. The one Michael’s got downloaded is an alarm that cycles through pre-recorded soundbites. It’s probably meant for music snippets or gentle wakeups said by loved ones.

_It’s all gonna be murder._

See? Much better than a murmured ‘wake up darling’. Michael can barely remember what prompted Ryan to say that, but thank shit it was recorded, because it’s a phrase that understands how Michael feels about mornings.

_It’s all gonna be murder!_

Michael slaps at the snooze button. He’s awake and not about to fall back asleep, but if he doesn’t touch the phone it’ll repeat every ten seconds at an increasing volume. He lays there loose-limbed and warm until the five minute snooze counts down.

_AWGGWK!_

Michael laughs at his popcorn ceiling and turns the app off. The quietest volume of that soundbite is already screeching. It gets truly painful if it starts cycling up. That origin he does remember, mostly because he filmed it himself. The video is still on his basically abandoned Vine account. That’s the sound of Gavin jokingly putting up his arms while Ryan is swinging, only for Ryan to bail from the swing and attempt to force Gavin to catch him. Gavin got kicked in the testicle and they both went down. Ryan’s palms were pretty scraped on the “safety” gravel, but Gavin’s legs were a bloody mess. Michael doesn’t feel bad saying that it. Was. _Hilarious_.

His shower is quiet. At his parents house a waterproof radio hung in the shower, tuned to Christian rock. For the first few weeks on his own, Michael listened to the nastiest metal he could find in the shower, out of spite. These days his phone stays charging in the main room until the last possible second. He’d rather have that last one percent on the bus than while bathing, if it came down to it.

Post-shower, houserobes are a _must_. The entirety of Morrison Tower is intensely air conditioned. Yeah, Michael can appreciate that after trekking from the bus stop to the lobby. In certain weather, the five minute walk can have the armpits of his shirt two shades darker. That doesn’t mean he has to like cold air blowing on his wet naked ass.

Next on the list is breakfast. Usually it’s toast. Stale bread tastes fine crisped and covered with butter, and stale bread is good for the budget. Today it’s something way better, thanks to keyboard smash grocery store.

Michael pulls a bowl from the dishes cupboard- he owns four so he’ll need to do washing soon- and fills it three quarters full with cereal. It’s a sketchy brand, something called KoKo Kats, but he’s always liked Count Chocula and what pours out of the lurid box looks much the same. Top it off with milk and it’s almost like he’s a wholesome suburban kid. He’s even got a fucking placemat to put down on the beat-to-shit coffee table that does triple duty as desk and kitchen table.

The last step of the routine is to gather all the shit he needs for the next fifteen hours. The easiest way to do it is to have a school backpack and a work backpack. It looks stupid on the full morning bus; standing with a deathgrip on a pole if he’s lucky or on one of the rubber loops if he’s not -he’s _never_ lucky enough to get an actual seat- a backpack on his back and another in his dangling hand. Still, it’s better than forgoing dinner or wrinkling his uniform.

The bus stop is at the back of the school, about five feet from the only hole in the wide expanse of chain link fence. It’s the football game entrance primarily, because most high schoolers have a car, or a ride of some kind. Closeted Christian Michael would have been one of those kids, but Proud and Atheist Michael gets off the bus with about fifteen other kids and heads towards the nearest set of doors.

Michael drops his work backpack in his locker, but needs his school bag. Obviously. He also needs one of the computers in the lab adjacent to the library. It’s a massive pain in the ass to try to type out an essay on a smartphone, even with autofill in play. When everything went down the guidance counsellor helped him rearrange his classes to be in things with less take-home work, but in the end, school is school. Essays happen.

For the next forty five minutes Michael types out a second draft from the mess he hand-wrote while bored in chemistry. The lab days are good, but the theory days drag ass. Isomers have the same number of atoms of each element but different arrangements in space, he freakin’ gets it already.

At 8:50 the swivel chair beside him bounces hard as a body throws itself on it. Thanks to his earbuds he doesn’t hear the shriek of old plastic and springs, but Michael knows better than to leave them in. Gavin will either tug them out or just shout loud enough to be heard over any music.

“Hey my boi,” Michael says, clicking in the corner of the GDoc to title it before spinning to the left to face him.

Gavin jams his knees between Michael’s, squashing the fabric covered foam to get as close as he can. The kiss is rough and more misplaced than not, half on the skin above his lip rather than the lip itself. Michael enjoys it anyway.

“Morning,” Gavin replies finally, after breaking away. He turns his chair to face the computer and logs on so the tech won’t come over to give him shit about wasting resources. It’s a crock if you ask Michael, there are like thirty computers and less than half are currently being used. But Mr Souttire has ultimate power in this room, so Gavin plays along.

“Play anything good last night?” Michael asks. It’s a bland question, for all that it’s leading if Gavin chooses to answer. Michael knows he won’t. Around eight Gavin texted him to let him know he wouldn’t be answering for a while, and the next thing Michael heard from him was the goodnight text. For over three hours he was too busy to talk, and there are only a few options why. If Gavin got caught up in a video game he’ll say it now. If he was doing ...whatever it is Geoff teaches him, he won’t say dick. Most magicians aren’t so mute, but Gavin’s got a pretty solid Don’t Ask Don’t Tell attitude.

As is the norm for the-answer-is-actually-magic, Gavin changes the subject completely. “Ryan told me you thought I’d care. I don’t. I mean it’s not like you love some rando.”

“Who says I love you?” 

Michael’s expecting Gavin to squeak out his name with the wrong pronunciation as always. What he gets is an elbow in the ribs. “You’ve loved me since we blew up the nativity your arseholes set up.”

At this point Michael doesn’t bother to correct Gavin anymore. Unless and until his parents apologise on hand and knee, Gavin’s always going to refer to them as assholes. It’s almost romantic, the complete hatred both his boyfriends have for them.

Michael elbows him back viciously enough that Gavin coughs. “Team Nice Dynamite to the end.”

Gavin leans over to snag Michael’s backpack from the floor, and drops it in his lap. It’s a bit of a dick crusher; two binders and two textbooks, not the mention his lunch. At least his phone was on the desk.

“Class now.”

“You just want to photocopy my notes, you fuckin’ lazyass,” Michael replies, swinging one strap over his arm.

“I save my energy for more important things,” Gavin replies. He wiggles his eyebrows enthusiastically.

Michael laughs. “I’m sorry, was that supposed to be sexy?”

“Well we can’t all be Ryan, now can we? Or a neighbour, apparently.”

Michael elbows Gavin again, this time in the densely packed hallway. At least a hundred students are milling around waiting for the last possible second to go to first period. “Fuck off with that already. It was a one time thing, I’m happy with you and Rye.”

Gavin stumbles and nearly trips as some ass nugget bumps into the back of him and doesn’t say shit. If it wasn’t for Gav grabbing his forearm, his boi would have gone down. Michael whirls around, looking for the dumbass he has a sworn boyfriendly duty to flip off. Instead he finds himself grabbing some guy by the silky fabric of his jersey and tugging him in for a kiss.

The guy freaks. His hands land on Michael’s chest seconds before he’s shoving hard, like he’s wrestling a fucking bear. This time it’s Gavin who stops him from going down.

“I’m not gay you homo!” the guy shouts before pushing his way through the watching crowd. The watching crowd who’s only watching _because_ he’s freaking out. Michael and Gavin aren’t the only LGBT couple, and for the most part no one gives a shit.

Gavin’s eyes dart between the teen and Michael a few times before stilling. “I think he’s the wrong fourth to recruit.”

“I’m not recruiting, you fucktard.”

“Then why’d you snog him?”

“School spirit.” Gavin can’t dispute it. The guy is wearing a numbered jersey. There is a game tonight. Michael might have even attended it, if he wasn’t working.

“Micooo, he was a hipster. You can’t kiss hipsters!”

“He wasn’t a fuckin’ hipster. He’s on the team, that makes him a jock. Durrrr.”

“Black rimmed glasses and an ironic kid’s novelty watch. I rest my case.” Gavin crosses his arms.

Michael glances over at the guy again, who by now is in a safety huddle of five to ten fellow heterosexual jocks. Sure enough, he’s wearing a bright orange watch. Michael _knows_ that watch. There’s an advertisement for it on his KoKo Kats cereal. Gavin’s probably right. Like hell is Michael gonna tell him that though.

***

“I bought you a lunch.”

Gavin’s got the lip of the tray in each hand and he waggles it rapidly as Michael climbs onto the bench on the other side of the table. Gavin’s third period class is in the same hallway as the stairs to the cafeteria, so just like every other day this semester, he’s already got a spot staked out by the time Michael makes it from the second floor to the basement.

“I made lunch, stupid.” Michael waves his double knotted Walmart bag in response.

Gavin doesn’t take the bag from Michael and hurl it towards the nearest trashcan like he once would have. Wasting food isn’t something they do anymore. Instead Gav gets his inner salesman on. “This lunch is hot. Save that for dinner.”

“You don’t have to buy shit for me.” Would it be nice if he had an adult who would? Yes. Should his boyfriends? No.

“I’m not. I’m trading. You eat this now, you give me a return smoothie.”

“You following me?”

“Why not?”

The answer is obvious; Gavin’s guardian. His shrouded in mystery lessons. Michael doesn’t ask for a schedule of Gav’s life and neither does Ryan, but standard magical practice seems to be a lesson/concept/problem a day. Sometimes Gavin’s only out of contact for twenty minutes, sometimes Geoff lets him skip a day to rest up from a ...something that took until dawn to master.

But if Gavin says he’s available to hang out in the afternoon, who the fuck is Michael to call him a liar?

“Gimme the french fries.” It’s not like Gavin’s wrong. Everything he threw into the plastic bag will last until his dinner break, and his dinner plastic bag can wait until lunch tomorrow. French fries, on the other hand, are a limited commodity.

The idea of hanging out with his boy after school makes class drag until each minute is its own hour. Michael can’t even distract himself talking under his breath to a buddy. He doesn’t exactly ...have them. You’d think the high schooler with his own apartment would be the most popular kid, if only so others could use him. Problem is a lot of people think he did something to deserve exile. _Not_ the gay thing. It might be Texas, but it’s Austin, a small oasis of Democrats in a Republican state. The prevailing theory is Michael spelled his family to not notice his outbursts, and only once someone found a loophole were they able to truly see him and then send him away for veiling them in the first place. It’s complete crap, but getting enraged at the gossipers only proves their point.

Halfway through sixth period Michael starts putting his project away. Unlike most of the people in the class, who are going the easy route with jewellry boxes and iPod stands, Michael’s making a table. It’s a bit over the wood allowance per student, but Ms O’Connell doesn’t seem to mind. She likes him for attempting something intense. The only students she likes more are those who do intricate artsy pieces. Rumor has it the stuff she makes outside of office hours goes for thousands of dollars.

“Good progress,” she says as he heads out. It’s not just a stock phrase. She’s not the kind of teacher to pat kids on the head and give out stickers. If Ms O’Connell thinks Michael’s done good today, it’s because he’s done good.

“Thanks.” It’s for more than the compliment. Michael has a pass from the administration to leave his last period a half hour early so he can make the bus that gets him to his shift on time. A lot of teachers would be irritated by that, hence the guidance counsellor making one of his alternating last periods a spare. But Ms O’Connell doesn’t take it personally, doesn’t act like Michael’s saying her class isn’t important. Mr Darcy did, last semester. Ms O’Connell’s cooler than that, has more self-confidence.

Michael’s only half surprised to see Gavin in the hallway, playing a game on his phone. He’s stretched out in a way that takes up almost the whole width of the hallway. Only Gav’s backpack currently repurposed as a pillow slumped against Michael’s locker shows why he feels like the hallway is his.

“Not getting Geoff to drive you?”

“Skipped so I could bus with you.”

Obviously. “How many times have you skipped last period?”

Gavin shrugs his shoulders up into the padding of his bag. “Lots. But it’s not like it’s the same class every time.”

“No, it’s the same two classes.”

“Look, I told them to switch my classes when I saw yours. It’s their fault.”

Michael really doubts Geoff will see it that way when Gavin flunks and therefore doesn’t graduate. Really fucking doubts it. On the other hand, Gavin isn’t doing college either, so summer school isn’t as life ruining as it could be.

“Fine. Whatever. Move your ass so I can get my work bag.”

The bus ride to Sweet Pulp is nothing like rom-coms would film it as. There’s no white haired lady or black man with inexplicably _paper_ grocery bags admiring their youthful love. There’s no holding of hands, or heads resting on shoulders. Hell, they don’t even talk the whole time. Michael’s got his earbuds in and favourite band of the day on. Gavin’s playing whatever the fuck he was playing before. There’s no need for either of them to interrupt the other.

That said, it’s Gavin who pulls the cord to stop the bus at the proper stop. Gavin knows his life, so any judgey soccer mom audience member can suck a dick.

“Ohhh, a jukebox store!”

Michael rolls his eyes. It’s been in the strip mall for over a month, there’s no reason for Gav to get excited about it now. No reason to get excited at all, actually. “Weren’t you giving me shit for kissing a hipster this morning?”

“Ahah! So you admit he was a hipster!”

“You’re excited about a jukebox. Jukebox!” Michael shouts back.

“Shut up about jukeboxes, you mong. Go clock in.”

Michael’s actual first task is to change into his uniform, but after that’s done he can sit in the booth with his boyfriend, his leg crushing whatever magical shit Gavin has in the pockets of his magician's jeans, and watch a short film or two on Youtube. Gav always seems to have great links stored up. He’s got a cameraman’s eye, to the point of watching content he doesn’t like because it’s expertly crafted. Case in point; the first thing Gav shows him is a zombie apocalypse movie called Cargo. Gavin’s sensitive as hell when it comes to horror, but it’s a finalist in some Australian independent film festival, and turns out Gav’s right. It’s good, for all that it’s depressing as hell.

Even when Michael has to start his shift Gavin doesn’t stop. He just changes strategy. No surprise to Michael. Over the last two years the three of them have gotten pretty good at figuring out how to make dates out of their time crunch schedules.

Michael can’t watch the whole set up. He’s busy pulverising banana after banana because Sweet Pulp has a “Nanner Special” on Wednesdays and every person that comes in wants a BOGO smoothie which necessitates banana somewhere in the mix. He does see Gavin pull out his phone charger though, and that’s all the info Michael really needs. Gavin’s about to do a charm that Ryan puts in the category of Useful But Anti-TOS. It happens a lot. It’s actually about the third unstated rule of magic. Michael’s got the list pretty much memorised because it’s one of the few things Gavin’s told them, as compared to Ryan Wikiing.

1\. No take backs. No spell, charm, or hex can be simply reversed. 2. Every spell, charm, and hex has an astronomical amount of loopholes. True magical skill is about finding and exploiting them. 3. Just because you come up with something doesn’t mean you’re legally allowed to do what you just did. You better hope your customer is too happy to care. 4. No journeyman will learn in their birth country, to stabilize the basic skill set of all nations. 5. Your master’s the right fit for you, the people in charge of that shit don’t fuck it up.

The last rule is the one that Michael doesn’t trust. He knows Gavin believes it’s true, but it’s hard to keep the trust when he’s never even met Geoff. And it’s not like he knows anything about the apprentice-sorters to judge their trustworthiness. He doesn’t know if there’s a counsel by region, or a King of Spells, King of Hexes and King of Charms, or if once you hit a certain level of loophole creativity you’re considered a super skilled elite Master. The only thing Michael knows for sure is that there’s no special school or college for magic users- Gavin laughed when he asked.

The next time Michael looks up, Gavin’s done it. Michael’s seen it more than once and he still doesn’t get _how_ , but he doesn’t feel stupid. Magic’s a yes or no, comprehension or none, have it or don’t thing. There’s no gradation to it, and those lacking it vastly outnumber those that have it. Michael doesn’t have to understand magic to know that Gavin’s put one end of the phone charger into his cell, and the other somehow into the glass of the window, and now the Youtube video is a ten by eight feet panel. He might not have the warmth of one of his boyfriends pressed against his side anymore, but he at least has another Tropfest film to watch.

The next hour goes like that; Gavin picking out things to show Michael from across the room, Michael watching whenever he doesn’t have to make another order. Gav’s obviously seen everything he’s playing, he mostly watches Michael watching. It’s sweet, how much he cares about entertaining him. Whenever he can -whenever there’s not something he has to do to not get fired- Michael flashes his boi a smile or a thumbs up. Thankfully the customers today mostly seem indifferent to the videos flashing across the window. Michael’s seen all kinds of reactions in the past, from stating requests to asking if Sweet Pulp has a license to hold a production.

“How is this a good time for you?” Eric asks, in a lull.

Gavin shrugs. “Dunno. Just is.”

Michael feels the same way. It’s hard to feel much guilt about having to work every day and limit their free time together because it’s not just him. Ryan’s major/minoring at UT at Austin and the theatre major requires participation in outside productions. Gavin might be able to drop every minute of a school day without second thought, but he’ll never not answer when magic calls. Everything is anticipation and leaving someone wanting more. And maybe that’s not always as sexy as Harlequins would have the general population believe, but they’ve decided to make this work. So it will.

Official policy is when a customer returns a smoothie after a single sip claiming their order was made incorrectly, it’s disposed of. As with most retail work, there’s a difference between official policy and how shit actually goes. Lindsay remakes the citrus sensation smoothie without grapefruit this time -which is called an orange creamsicle smoothie, fuckin’ _customers_ , man- but puts the returned one on the back counter. After the stupid ass customer leaves, Gavin jumps up from his table. He drops a quarter in the tip jar and Lindsay hands him the original, minus the used straw.

“It’s... There’s a sensation! A sensation of _citrus_!” Gavin gasps after his first sip.

Lindsay reaches over the counter to flick Gavin in the forehead with all four fingers. “You idiot.”

Michael grabs his phone when it buzzes. There are only a few people that text him, so the chances of it being Ryan replying is high.

“Ryan says he’ll be here around nine.”

Gavin makes a face. “Damn!”

“You got something wrong with him?” Gav’s made it clear he’s got no problem with lesser outside relationships, but Michael has no idea how that conversation went. Maybe Ryan had to verbally beat him about hypocrisy first. And if that’s the case, Gav might be acting like a bitch right now.

“No,” Gavin replies, like it’s obvious. “I just have to go before that. I’ve got shit, and stuff.”

There’s no point in asking, so Michael goes with a more fun response. “Man, Shakespeare would write sonnets about your fuckin’ eloquence.”

Gavin’s ‘shit and stuff’ is apparently at five minutes after six. He doesn’t get a text that Geoff’s in the parking lot. Nor does Geoff come to the door. It’s a charm on the necklace Gavin wears. The chain defies gravity and slides up Gavin’s neck until it’s pooled down his back and the pendant is taut on his adam’s apple. A traditional talisman, according to what Ryan’s Googled, to let the journeyman know his master wants him.

Gavin, being Gavin, decides to make a goddamn fool out of himself. His hand flies to his throat and he holds his breath so his face starts going red. He throws his right hand out towards the counter and makes clawing come here motions.

Michael points an accusing finger at his boyfriend. “I should fuckin’ sue you. Faking choking in a restaurant is like screaming bomb in an airport.”

“Terrorism?” Lindsay asks.

“No. Damaging to the innocent civilians’ mental and emotional stability.”

“Name me the last time you were stable, and I’ll consider going to court,” Gavin challenges.

Lindsay laughs. “He’s got you there. But you can always call Chuck Palahniuk and let him know about the copyright infringement.”

Gavin shakes his head. “I am a magician. I fear no copyright lawyer, it’s against my religion.”

“What did I do to deserve you two?”

“You wound me, Lindsay! Wound me to death!” Gavin clutches his chest and topples himself backwards. The chair clatters loud enough to attract the attention of every eat-in customer, and only fast reflexes in the general neck region stop Gavin from braining himself. Good thing, Michael likes Gavin’s skull unsmashed.

Once he’s back up on his feet Gavin darts over to the counter. He leans far over it, just like he did earlier. Only _this_ time it’s to get a kiss. Most of the customers are no longer watching, and it’s not like Lindsay or Eric cares, so Michael makes it good. Makes it a kiss that’ll last until the next time he sees Gavin. Then Gav’s out the door, in the parking lot, getting into the car of a man that holds Gav’s future that he’s never even met. Does Michael hold a bit of a grudge about that? It’s possible. Whatever. Ryan gets it.

***

It’s closer to ten than nine when Ryan actually shows up. Michael doesn’t mind the tardiness. It’s not like end of shift is the end of their night. At the very least Ryan will hang out with him for a few hours before taking off to crash in his dorm. The far more likely option involves nudity and dicks and Ryan’s live-action voice replacing his recorded voice as the impetus to get up tomorrow morning.

“Hello, weird second boyfriend,” Eric calls out from the counter, the only employee currently situated there. He’s counting cash because they’re all crossing their fingers that some jerkoff doesn’t order in the next fifteen minutes. 

“Hello, close-minded monogamist,” Ryan replies in an equally pleasant tone.

Michael doesn’t get them. Eric thinks their ‘lifestyle’ is wrong, but he doesn’t do anything with the belief. After a decade and a half of listening to his parents and the church Eric seems incredibly lackluster. And then there’s Ryan. He doesn’t like Eric for weakly shaming them, but he never actually rails against it. It’s all very... anticlimactic.

Fuck it. Like he reminds himself every time Ryan visits while Eric’s on shift, it’s not his problem. Eric doesn’t say shit to him, probably because he knows the way Michael bellows out his anger, maybe because Michael’s got seniority and Eric thinks the asst mg would take his side. And Ryan hates people knight in shining armouring him, even though he does it for the people he cares about. Ryan’s the nicest kind of hypocrite.

Michael tosses the cloth in his hand at his boyfriend. Ryan catches it, no problem. The Windex that goes next is a bit more risky, but Ryan manages that too.

“Finish the goddamn windows so I can mop the floor. I might even get out on time then.”

“The quicker your ass is where I want it, the better.” Ryan pauses for effect then continues, “I mean in my car, you pervs.”

Thank Christ above -metaphorically speaking, since Michael’s done with all that shit- there’s no last minute customers. Lindsay finishes the dishes and Eric finishes cash and daily inventory around the same time that Michael finishes the whole store’s floor, up to and including the back office because the manager’s a dick like that. Which means time to clock the fuck out and get the fuck out.

Even though Ryan was full of it, the truth is Michael likes Ryan’s car. It’s a newer SUV, because Ryan’s extended family are the kind of rich people that hand-me-down everything. The black faux leather seats don’t even have lint and food crumbs in the divots around the piping yet. Ryan’s taste in music leaves something to be desired, but twenty minutes of Bowie beats forty five minutes of his own playlists on the bus.

There’s no bullshit when they make it up to the seventh floor, then inside the apartment. Michael strips himself of his uniform with a bit of help and a significant amount of leering from Ryan, and it’s not like he’s going to get redressed only to get undressed a second time in a half an hour. Problem being that leaves him in underwear in the air conditioned space, and no man’s dick wants that. So after insisting that Ryan take off an equal amount of clothes, Michael heads directly for his bed. Making out and roaming hands under the covers is pretty goddamn okay with him.

The knock on the door is startling, but not surprising. Gavin didn’t promise to meet up again after lessons and dinner, but he doesn’t like being left out of things. Not in a jealous way. In a more people means more funny opinions in a pg setting, and more things to touch in an nc17 one. The chance of the knocker being Gavin is high, stoned neighbour needing to borrow a lighter a distant second. 

Ryan has much the same thought. He gets out of bed and completely forgoes his discarded jeans for heading directly to the door. Michael doesn’t say a word, but Ryan irritatedly explains himself anyway. “It’s either Gavin or late night Jehovah’s Witnesses. Either way someone’s seeing my dick.”

Technically it’s just a dick outline, but still nothing to scoff at. Ryan’s got a pretty sweet bulge in his boxer-briefs. Sure enough, it seems to please Gavin when he sees it. His expression turns dirty before he’s even out of the hallway.

“I knew you guys would be making it!”

“What a surprise!” Michael shouts from his sprawl on the bed. “Ryan’s in my apartment for the first time in days and we’re not as chaste as housewives.”

“Don’t housewives have loads of sex?” Gavin inquires, closing the door. A man after Michael’s own heart, he immediately pulls off his t-shirt. He completes the look by nudging off his sneakers and dropping his jeans to the floor. No underwear; he must have been positive they were ‘making it’ and he’d get to join. 

“Do you think your mom has loads of sex?” Ryan retorts.

“Jesus!” Gavin’s face wrinkles like he bit into a rotten peach.

“Don’t kill his erection before he fucks me with it.” Michael demands. Like hell is he not getting laid because everyone’s too busy being scarred for life.

“Oh, is that how this is gonna go?” Ryan leers.

Both of them are looking at him like he’s a feast. A slutty slutty feast. It’s moments like these that have Michael laughing at the idea that he could have ever stayed at home, silent and perfect in the church’s eyes. Who wants to be next to God when they could be goddamned happy instead?

“Whoever gets their fingers in my ass firsts gets first dibs.”

Gavin and Ryan look at each other. There’s a moment of silent judging of the other. Then, instead of competitively racing the few steps to the bed, they slowly saunter over. Ryan gets the lube open and spills some over his hand as Gavin hooks his thumbs in Michael’s underwear and tugs until they’re off. Michael would try to figure out what they’ve wordlessly decided, except he’s busy watching Ryan and Gavin clasp hands and wiggle their fingers until all ten digits are coated. Michael’s not sure what that means for him, but he’s certain it’s good news.

His mouth goes dry as Ryan and Gavin sit at the end of the bed and separate his legs. Each of his boys pulls one towards himself and Michael’s knees are forced to bend over their laps. He doesn’t have a doctor kink, but smutty porn stirrups suddenly make sense to him. But he still doesn’t know what their plan is until they actually do it. First Gavin, then Ryan are pushing an index finger past his rim. Two for the price of one is a recurring theme tonight, apparently.

“What are you going to do now?”

Michael’s eyes closed instinctively at first breech, the way they always do. He doesn’t need to see to know Ryan’s smirking. Hell, he doesn’t need to have heard the tone. Those words could have been run through Microsoft Narrator. Of course he’s smirking. Michael threw down the gauntlet, and Ryan figured out how he and Gavin would challenge it. 

Michael goes with his heart. His slutty, kinky heart. “Both.”

“Yeah, okay, but who first?”

“Who do you like more?” Gavin croons obnoxiously.

“Both,” Michael repeats.

“That’s romantic, but we’re in sex mode, currently.” Ryan says, faux patient. The abrupt drag of his finger inside of Michael belies his tone, and the way it feels against Gavin’s immobile one makes Michael more sure.

“Both means both, you complete retards. Both go first.”

Gavin is the first to reply, dragging it out in his confusion. “Like...spit roasting? Or...double pen?”

Michael opens his eyes. Eye contact is important when convincing skeptics you’re not fooling around. “We haven’t tried it. I want to. I’ve seen it done before.”

“Yeah. You’ve also seen Tubgirl, does that mean you wanna do that?”

Michael shouts at Ryan over the sound of Gavin gagging. “Ryan! Seriously! Don’t make him soft before we use it!”

“Sorry Gav.”

“Look, I’m not asking you to do it. It’s not your hot ass on the line, it’s mine. So just fuck me already.”

Neither says anything, but Michael can practically see the _meh, fuck it_ cross their faces. All at once they’re both moving their fingers, counter tempo, Gavin’s instroke on Ryan’s outstroke. And then Gavin’s adding his second finger and Michael groans, can’t help it, can’t control how loud he is. It’s fucking hot because normally they’d be done, three fingers is enough of a stretch that his ass can take a dick, but today he’ll be getting so much more. The anticipation’s got his cock leaking all over his stomach.

Ryan’s finger -his _fourth_ \- is a cold addition. He’s obviously reslicked with new lube. The way it’s dripping down the curves of his ass Michael already knows he’ll have to take a shower rather than the normal wipe and sleep routine. 

“Michael, open me a condom?” Gavin asks a second before a packet lands on his chest. Michael doesn’t know where it came from. For all he knows it’s goddamn magic. He doesn’t give two shits, just happy that Gavin’s not making a big deal of it. 

Gav doesn’t like condoms, has this dumbass theory that it’s awkward to stop mid-foreplay to get one. Ryan has a smartass theory that STDs are more awkward. They’ve argued about it more than once. Michael stays the fuck out of it, primarily because he knows Ryan will win without him, and Gavin’ll just get pissy and stubborn if he feels ganged up on. Basically as long as they’re still fucking other people -Ryan with fetus producing women among that number- it’s condoms or no fluids. 

The task goes well. Given that Michael’s got the only non-slippery hands in the room, better him than anyone else. What his boys are doing is somewhat distracting but there’s payoff in focusing. That payoff is Ryan temporarily backing off so Gavin can take Michael’s right leg and tug his hips down the bed, closer. Once he’s resituated it’s just a matter of sliding in home. 

It’s easy. There’s no tension, four fingers more than enough for Gavin’s dick. Michael still loves every second it takes for Gavin to regain his breath and start thrusting. There’s a rush in being the reason someone has to yank on their balls to not come instantly. Bottoming is fucking good for the ego.

“Gav, I think if you- Michael, can you get up and like, sorta ride him? Except stay on your knees.”

Ryan’s clearly watched the same DP pornos Michael has, it’s the position he was thinking of too. They pull the next two steps off without a hitch either, Ryan sliding underneath while finding a place for his legs, and managing to line up so Michael can feel him pressing up against his rim as Gavin continues to slowly undulate.

“Remember you can call this off at any time.”

“Yeah yeah, the safeword is waffles,” Michael jokes. Gavin chuckles a little, Ryan not at all, but there’s no reason to take it so seriously. It’s not like anyone’s gonna be paddling him or strangling him. It’s still just anal, even if it is _more_ anal than ever before.

Michael almost says no when Ryan breaches him. The head of Ryan’s cock is impossibly large added to Gavin’s girth. He’s pretty sure the noise he makes is a moan with a desperate chuckle on the end.

“Michael, you okay?”

Wheeze-chuckle. Nope, he’s not gonna be saying any words any time soon.

“Michael, you gotta let us know if we have to stop.”

Michael makes another noise he hopes translates as _we didn’t get this far to bitch out now_. He wants this too much now, never mind that it had only barely occurred to him before. 

His boyfriends must understand the message because Ryan doesn’t pull out, just splays his hand on the divot above Michael’s ass, and Gavin shifts the tiniest bit to press a kiss to his open mouth. 

They hold like that for time immemorial. Until the stretch is less overwhelming. And then Michael gets batted in the face with another wave of sensation when Ryan arches his hips up and he’s all of a sudden thrusting. Michael’s getting fucked, two dicks at once, and he kinda needs to scream because who could have imagined? Porn doesn’t look like this, porn doesn’t feel like this. Porn didn’t prepare him for both his loving boyfriends pounding him until he cries. 

He can’t tell if he’s clenching down. He’s not sure what he’s doing and what he’s feeling. It’s all a blur of sensation, too intense to keep it clear in his head. But Gavin’s hands are tightening trying to form fists around his shoulders and normally that’s what he does when Michael’s spurring him to orgasm, so maybe he is doing something.

Gavin’s eyes screw up and he makes a high pitched squeal. Michael can’t blame him, but he’s not ready yet.

“Just don’t,” he gasps, has to take a deep breath, “don’t pull out. I’m not-”

“I got you boi,” Gavin murmurs, and keeps his hands steady on Michael’s sides, keeps him upright as Ryan continues his rhythmic freaking excellent fucking.

Ryan comes too soon. It hasn’t been ten thousand years of this feeling so it’s too soon. It’s not okay. He’s not ready.

“He’s still hard Rye,” Gavin says.

Normally Michael would explain that he’s still here, you dick, but there’s no way to feel antagonistic like this. He doesn’t really feel like himself at all, even.

“I can’t jerk him off from this position. Michael, you want Gav to do it or you wanna move?”

The thought of not feeling this gets to him more than it should. It’s like a rabbit punch to the heart, actually. “No, don’t. I don’t-”

Ryan strokes up Michael’s back as far as he can reach. “It’s okay. We won’t move.”

“But-” Gavin protests.

Ryan cuts him off sternly. “Michael’d rather this, so we’ll give him this.”

The way they’re both acting clues him in that maybe he’s reacting a bit oddly. He just ... doesn’t care? It’s hard to care when everything in the world is straining width and hot hands on him.

Eventually it ends. There’s only so long a guy can keep a soft dick inside someone. The rational part of Michael gets it, but it makes him inexplicably sad.

“Shower now buddy? You’re pretty sticky.” 

In no way does getting up sound like a good idea. Ryan and Gavin are sweaty and they smell like sex and skin and why would he want that to go away? Michael shakes his head and stays laid out on Ryan, Gavin on his side facing them.

“Okay then, you don’t have to. We’ll be right back, just-”

Something in Michael panics. “Don’t. Please, I-”

“It’s cool mate. I’ll go, then Ryan’ll go. We’ll take turns, right?”

Gavin pats his back and the bed jostles as he gets up. Michael stops paying attention until Gavin comes back. Together his boyfriends roll him off Ryan, and then Gavin’s holding him so Ryan can go. Gavin doesn’t smell like sex and _them_ anymore, but at least the air still smells like cherry lube, so it’s not all gone.

Laying with them both is almost like sleeping. He’s not asleep, but everything in him feels calm, brain and body both. Gavin’s actually asleep, he makes these snuffled, not quite snoring noises when he sleeps. Ryan’s awake though. Normally Ryan crashes after sex, bio-chemicals winning over his insomnia. It only doesn’t happen when he’s got something on his mind. It stirs Michael a little bit. Maybe Ryan didn’t like the sex as much as he did? After all, Ryan did most of the work. 

“Sorry for being all passive and shit. I hope it wasn’t boring.” It comes out in a whisper. Considerate for Gav, yes, but also he just doesn’t really want to be loud. Everything is quiet now, and he’s only interrupting because he has to.

Ryan punches him in the shoulder blade. “The next time you say something that stupid I’m shooting you.”

“Okay,” Michael answers, small smile Ryan can’t see and Gavin’s not awake to look for. It’s from relief. The violent words mean nothing more than Ryan hates it when people aren’t self confident, especially people who deserve to be. Michael’s got no reason to feel bad, is what Ryan’s saying. Good, then. He doesn’t want to feel bad, he wants to feel _this_.


	3. Thursday

Michael wakes up to Ryan elbowing him. Judging from Gavin’s squawk on the other edge of the bed -someone must have had to pee in the middle of the night to have them all rearranged- it was a double elbow attack.

“Up, fuckheads,” Ryan says, painfully cheery. Not unlike most of the recorded messages on Michael’s alarm app, actually. “I can give you a ride to school but you gotta go in early.”

“I always go early,” Michael points out. Snark online, his brain next reboots his senses. The blanket is fucking plastered to his ass and thighs, like he’s the tits of a Frank Cho comic.

“Who’s fuckin’ idea was it to not clean up the lube before I fell asleep?”

“Yours actually,” and “That was all you, my friend,” his boyfriends answer simultaneously.

“Yeah, well. I need a shower more than Ke$ha needs God.”

Showering the morning after sex is always a very bodily thing for Michael. He doesn’t know if that’s how anyone else feels. He’s never asked Gavin or Ryan, or Justine before that, or even just the internet. It’s too awkward in one of the few ways Michael hates. He can handle about fifteen different kinds of pain and humiliation, has recorded them for internet posterity, but not that kind. 

Standing in the water and rubbing a washcloth full of green apple scented suds over the sticky cherry residue resets his skin. It reminds him that as good as sex is, it’s not the only thing his body is for. It’s not even the primary thing his body is for. He checks himself in the dim light of the shower for hickies and scratches to seem if there’s any remnants of those he loves. He runs his hands over his ass, his chest, parts his cheeks and touches himself. It’s all normal, everything is as normal as if he merely respawned in bed this morning.

When Michael gets out of the shower Gavin’s nowhere to be seen. Michael doesn’t say anything, but Ryan of course notices him scanning the small apartment for the missing person, like Gav’s there, he’s just hiding between the atoms and if he looks hard enough he’ll see him.

“Yeah, he said he was hoofing it back home. Had to get his shit.”

Michael rolls his eyes. “He couldn’t have just gotten you to idle outside his house as he got his backpack?”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Maybe he’s just super anti-smog.”

Michael rolls his eyes so hard he’s surprised they don’t start hemorrhaging from the trauma.

Ryan shakes his head and ruffles a hand through his bedhead hair. Whatever he’s been doing the last ten minutes it hasn’t been grooming. “Give it a break man. He wants journeyman life and his real life separate. You have your own fuckin’ shit, okay?”

One day Michael is going to actually continue this conversation. One day he’ll point out how much crap that is, because if it was true Gavin wouldn’t be throwing around charms like he did last night all willy-nilly. One day he’ll point out that it would be really fucking fantastic if he could shake Geoff’s hand and then ask him if he’s fucking his student, and if that’s what the O Holy Magic Masters intended with their fated relationship garbage.

One day.

Today he’s swiping deodorant under his arms, and putting a t-shirt on while counting how many he has left until he has to haul ass to a laundrymat, and striping the bed and duvet of it’s sheets because at least that way the mattress will have the day to air out. Today he’s gathering his shit into his two backpacks, including a new pen because yesterday’s ran out. Today he’s grabbing his deepest bowl and half filling it with milk and KoKo Kats. And by the time he talks to Ryan again, the conversation is thoroughly dead.

“I’m eating breakfast in your car,” Michael starts, pointing a spoon at Ryan. “You’re not gonna be a dick about stopping for stop signs. I’m leaving the bowl and spoon in your car. You’ll return it the next time I see you. You don’t have to wash it, let it get mouldy for all I care. But no tossing it.”

“I’m not the one that freaks about my cluttered back seats. That’s Monica,” Ryan protests, opening the door and grabbing both of Michael’s backpacks once he sees that he’s ready.

Michael’s not a hundred percent sure who Monica is. Someone in one of Ryan’s classes, at least, Michael knows they crash the library together. He doesn’t much care if she’s the blond or the redhead he met at Ryan’s last dorm party right now. “Well then don’t let fucking Monica toss my bowl.”

“If she tosses your bowl I promise to buy you a new one.”

“Or you could just not let her fucking toss it,” Michael counters. He locks the door with his free hand, then walks to the elevator. Seven flights doesn’t sound like the ideal mode of transport when carrying a bowl of cereal.

Eating in the car is an experience. It’s not quite as much of a wreck as that one It’s Always Sunny episode, but it’s not exactly good either. It takes Michael until the first traffic light to realise maybe he should have made something else. Something easily transportable. Scrambled eggs would be simple to chow down on in a moving vehicle. Or a handful of the granola bars he bought for dinner at work, because granola goes well with a free smoothie. Holding the milk filled bowl and the shallow spoon steady over potholes is an exercise in fast reflexes. On the plus side, he’s a guy, so it’s not like he cares if his shirt gets stained.

Michael finishes a good few minutes before they get to the school. He spends that time wiping his mouth with the back of his arm and skimming the textbook reading he had to do. Mrs Zarunski is a complete bitch about pop quizzes. Even though biomedics is second period today, it’s much harder to be stealthy about textbook reading in a prior class than it is to handwrite part of an essay.

Ryan pulls the car to a stop at the side of the school, where it’s possible to pull a u-turn. He unbuckles his belt and twists for a kiss, which Michael happily adds tongue to. 

“I love you.”

“Yeah. I mean, I love you too.” Michael can be forgiven for the crappy first reply. It’s obviously true, obviously mutual. Ryan’s one of Michael’s forever-people. Together they’re Team Crazymad, able to terrify and horrify spectators in a single sentence. But seeing as they’re not _girls_ , they don’t say it much. 

__Michael opens the door and hops down out of the car. Before he can close it Ryan calls out “have a good day at school.”_ _

__“The fuck are you, June Cleaver?”_ _

__Ryan flips him off through the window, then concentrates on pulling his U-ie. Michael, meanwhile, has shit to do. Even if he doesn’t particularly want to do fuckall, that’s not really an option. It takes balance to be an emancipated minor, like putting a bunch of bouncy balls on a plate, and then spinning that plate before lifting it ten feet over your head on a pole. Not doing his homework is the first step to the plate shattering on the ground, balls flying everywhere._ _

__There’s no door on the side of Juno Bailey. Which makes the school kind of a firetrap, if you think about it. Michael considers the trek to the back, then heads for the front. His locker is closer that way. He only goes through the back doors normally because it’s the bus entrance._ _

__Stunner of all fucking stunners, Gavin’s sitting on the school steps._ _

__Michael approaches silently and goes up the long ramp. If he’s stealthy enough, Gavin won’t notice and he can stand behind him and scream. Serves Gavin right if he screeches and plummets off the stairs onto the grass._ _

__Unfortunately Gavin spots him about two thirds of the way up the ramp. Michael then switches from prank mode to logic mode. “You are at least twenty minutes early. It’s not even eight thirty yet.”_ _

__“I thought you might be...”_ _

__Michael is of the opinion that Gavin trailing off is bullshit. “Pissed because you walk of shamed while I was in the shower? Nah bro.”_ _

__Actually, maybe he is a little bit, but whatever. Gavin’s a dick, the grass is yellow and torn up from a thousand sneakered heels, what else is new?_ _

__“Not pissed. I dunno. Weird, I guess? Because... Whatever, I was wrong. What homework do you still need to do?”_ _

__Michael could pursue. He could and Gavin would crumple. But Michael’s pretty sure that way lies uncomfortable conversations and why would he purposely angle for that? “How about fucking all of it? Did it look like I did some before you showed up?”_ _

__Gavin reaches his arm out and pats Michael’s knee before cupping it. Michael schools his face. He’s not okay with showing Gav how much he needed a morning touch from both his boyfriends._ _

__Still touching him Gavin continues. “You have half an hour now, what has to be done before lunch?”_ _

__“I’ve got Chem coming out my ass.”_ _

__“Yeah, I can’t assist with that. Sorry boi.”_ _

__Gavin is helpfully silent in the library. It’s really fucking out of character for him, but Michael can’t say he doesn’t appreciate it. The worksheet of problems, in a fair universe, would be done over the course of a night. Michael would do a problem then grant himself a reward for completing it. Problem reward problem reward. In the unfair world he lives in, chem worksheets are completed in a rush at eleven at night, the occasional text from Ryan lightening his mood. Today though he’s got about twenty five minutes to get them all the questions done and nothing special. It’s not like Michael can demand a Billy Madison-esque favour per problem from Gavin. Gav won’t want to stop, and Michael can’t let himself get distracted, as much as staying in the library all day and snuggling on the rattyass couch in the corner sounds like the best possible plan._ _

__At the first bell Michael starts to gather the mess of papers he’s spread across the red laminate table. Gavin helpfully unzips his binder for him so Michael can tuck it all away._ _

__The second Michael sees the tiny prick jock from yesterday he breaks away from Gavin and marches over. He kisses him straight on the lips. It lasts for a stunned three seconds before the guy shoves him away._ _

__“What,” Michael says. It’s not a question, or a defense. It’s a challenge._ _

__It’s also probably a mistake, Michael considers a second later when the jock’s fist is connecting with his eye. Challenging aggressive people is not like challenging a church friend. The punch makes him stagger, but the guy’s not done yet. The second punch hits slightly lower, in the cheekbone. It hurts more than the first, and Michael’s already leaning when the guy lands his third, boxes his ear. His eardrum pops, a knife of pain into the side of his head. Michael falls to the multicoloured linoleum and fucking prays that he doesn’t get kicked in the stomach. If he pukes he’ll have to wear his gym clothes for the rest of the day._ _

__“The gay panic defense doesn’t work in 2014, Timothy,” he hears a girl say through the ringing in his ear. What a brave fucking girlfriend, going against the shared opinion of the behemoths in letterman jackets. She deserves better than the assholes surrounding her._ _

__“Maybe not, but stand your ground does.”_ _

__Michael’d love to say he leaps to his feet and knocks the fucker’s tooth out. That’s a lie. He’s fuckin’ down for the count, left side of his face feeling like it exploded. Timothy and his buddies have swaggered away before he’s getting to his feet. His head is throbbing, but at least his ear’s popped back already. Tinnitus sucks ass._ _

__“Wonder if a neighbour will let me borrow an ice cube tray. I sure as shit don’t have one.”_ _

__“That’s what you care about?” Gavin asks flatly._ _

__The two minute warning bell rings and Michael shakes his head. “Nope. I care about combustibles in lab.”_ _

__He smacks Gavin’s ass and bolts. Being late for lab means you don’t get all the verbal instructions and Tibbons won’t let students do hands on if they’ve only read the hand out. He’s got a stupid rhyme about it and everything._ _

__Chem is not a lab. Chemistry is group marking each other’s working and explaining where other people’s wrong answers went wrong. Because apparently teachers don’t need to teach, as long as they stay in the room and provide ‘teachable moments’. Biomedics proves him right; sure enough, pop quiz. Anatomy of the heart and please draw arrows for direction of blood flow. Michael’s only half sure. Still, he can’t remember the last time he had an assignment he couldn’t complete in a later period, so he can’t regret accepting the recommendation. Textiles is spending half the fifty minutes trying to pin his might-never-be-a-hoodie with the weakass apparently unsharpened pins. But then it’s lunch, and lunch is Gav, and Gavin is a cure for boredom._ _

__Michael decides to sit beside Gavin, not their customary spots across the table from each other. The jerkoff will probably want to poke the bruise down the length of Michael’s face. Gav’s just that kind of guy. Hard to complain about it though, considering Michael is the kind of guy that enjoys startling people into falling down stairs. Given that, for now sitting beside him is safer for his face. If Gavin has to stretch to the side and either cross Michael’s field of vision or lean back suspiciously to prod, that gives Michael more time to smack his hand away._ _

__Gavin takes the change with little reaction. He only just moves his backpack from the bench to the floor on his right. He’s already eating, of course. The weird thing is that he doesn’t speak through his mouthful of pizza to say hi. That leaves Michael to start the conversation._ _

__“So Ryan’s sent me about seventy texts planning calculated ways to murder someone. I had to take it out of my front pocket before I got a boner. Guess you told him I got hit?”_ _

__Gavin moves his triangle of pizza away from his face in order to look at him head on. “I told him you got gay bashed, Michael.”_ _

__Not even the incorrectly pronounced name can amuse Michael when Gavin looks so freaked out. Especially considering there’s no real reason for it. “Dude, come on. I was asking for it.”_ _

__Gavin puts the pizza down entirely. It’s concerning, frankly. Gavin clings to piping hot pizza the way a stoner does to their pipe. The greasy glistening thing abandoned on the napkin is a sign that Gavin’s taking this morning way too seriously._ _

__His words only confirm it. “Hasn’t Tumblr taught you anything? Victim blaming is always shite.”_ _

__“Yeah, in cases of abuse and rape and shit. That was totally fucking different. I provoked him and he took a swing.”_ _

__Clearly his logic is sound. Gavin doesn’t dispute a word of it. Though he also doesn’t go back to chewing his pizza. He instead jams a straw into his can of 7-Up, and takes a sip. Then he just gnaws on the white and red striped straw. Michael isn’t sure what else to say to get his boi to relax. He also can’t play a nice game of sneakered footsie, the way they do when he’s on the other side of the table. At least he’s sitting with the fucked up side of his face facing away from Gavin. If he’s this upset he doesn’t need the miscoloured reminder._ _

__After a good five minutes of silence -Michael’s sandwich and Gavin’s soda providing the flimsiest of excuses- Gavin leans to get something out of his bag. Michael’s assumption is homework he needs help on. Michael took the core math and English that Gav’s doing now in first semester, though at least then they had world history together. Gavin’s not stupid, he’s brilliant with things he gets. And he’s a freakin’ magician, so he’s essentially set for life there. He’s just not a thesis statement about A Tale of Two Cities kind of guy. Michael is proven wrong with the sudden thud of plastic on plastic. An ice cube tray is on the table between their lunches._ _

__“Nicked it from the teachers’ lounge.”_ _

__“Thanks, buddy. But you know that the ice isn’t gonna last right?” Michael got hit in the head, not Gav, so basic logic shouldn’t be a problem for him._ _

__“Did a charm. It’ll keep frozen in any temperature. As long as it’s in the tray, right. It’s on the tray, not on the ice. It’s not like infinite ice. I could do...” Gavin trails off, that stupid blank look on his face._ _

__Michael’s seen the expression a bunch. It’s one of Gavin’s defaults. Sometimes it means what the fuck is this assignment asking, sometimes it means I think I have a new idea to beat that boss level. In this case it’s obvious. This time it’s all about stupid fucking magic; Gavin’s first love. Michael knows if he doesn’t stop this now Gavin’s gonna call Geoff and demand to come home early to learn how to charm ice that never melts. Unless that would be a spell? Charms are on objects, spells on anything organic, hexes are either as long as it has a negative intent, but does water count as organic? Probably._ _

__“Shut up, that’s great. I appreciate you committing petty crime for me.”_ _

__Gavin elbows him. “Team Nice Dynamite, right?”_ _

__“Please don’t explode my ice. I love this ice. I may have to marry this ice.”_ _

__“Don’t think that’s legal in this state,” Gavin laughs. Thank Christ. Depressed Gavin hurts Michael’s fucking _soul_._ _

__Things run in that vein for awhile. Not the gay marriage thing. Michael can’t see his and Gavin’s and Ryan’s thing ending any time soon, especially considering the boredom factor is completely nil with the allowance for secondary flings. He also can’t see getting married any time before his thirties, and Texas will be equal by then. Besides, politics are boring as hell. They talk about marrying objects, marrying animals, or what if there were human-animal hybrids, would you as a full human marry that new species?_ _

__And then Gavin fucks it all up by being serious again. “Was this morning because of, you know...”_ _

__“It wasn’t some petty revenge. I told you. I wasn’t that pissed you bailed this morning.”_ _

__Gavin’s gaze narrows and Michael’s pretty sure he picked up on the ‘that’. But that’s not the direction Gav takes things. “That’s not what I meant. I mean because of last night.”_ _

__Michael’s eyes dart around the cafeteria, to no avail. He can’t actually see Gavin’s weird logic trail. “Rough sex last night led me to acting out today?”_ _

__“Uh, maybe?”_ _

__“Gavin, you are smoking some mighty fine crack.”_ _

__As he finishes eating Michael’s mouth starts to tingle. Kinda like when he accidentally eats melon in a return smoothie another employee’s left unlabelled. A mild allergy; not enough to stop drinking once he tastes it, just enough to face consequences. Michael crumples the baggie into a ball and tosses it into the garbage can. At another table someone pops their paper bag. Michael instinctively looks -whether that’s a predator-prey instinct or a fourth grader’s humor instinct is up in the air- to see if he can figure out who did it. He doesn’t, but twisting back his eye catches something else. Matthew Rodriguez is the next person to his left, maybe five ass widths over with his friends. Matthew Rodriguez has shared all of five words with him; they had English together last semester. Matthew Rodriguez is _there_ and Michael finds himself standing up, crossing the distance, and kissing the boy._ _

__And then he kisses Clark Staton._ _

__And the he kisses Sun Ling._ _

__And then he just doesn’t stop. Michael’s body is on some kind of insane kissing autopilot. His legs just keep delivering him to new people, and his waist keeps bending him down and his lips keep pressing against other students. No one’s trying to stop him, and he has no idea how to stop himself. Brain commands aren’t working. No one’s trying to stop him, and one in five are kissing back, one in ten are standing up before he can bend down. A few people are filming him, and he can’t stop and Gavin must be across the cafeteria watching him and they said open relationship but neither Gav nor Ryan meant this and he _can’t stop_._ _

__Until he does._ _

__He’s come full circle, standing at the opposite end of the table from Matthew. Standing across the table from Gavin, and it’s the most irrational thought Michael’s ever had in his eighteen years of life, but he can’t help but think that if he had stayed on this side of the table, stayed where he was supposed to, this wouldn’t have happened._ _

__“The hell was that?” Gavin shrieks. The many hundred students all staring at him want to know too. The room is eerily quiet. Michael’s got a choice to make here. He’s got two options. He can tell the truth, and face the fucking avalanche of consequences. Or he can lie, and get almost everyone off his back._ _

__Michael crosses his arms, freshly grateful that he wasn’t kicked until a rib cracked. He steels his voice, raises it so that everyone watching can hear. “Guess I wanted to see how many gay bashers this school has.”_ _

__The volume sky rockets as everyone starts talking again. Never mind that half the people he kissed were girls, the bluster seems to have worked._ _

__Michael sits. Sits where he’s supposed to, goddamn it. After a minute he swallows his nerves and reaches out to grab Gavin’s arm. He most likely won’t tug out of the contact, and if he does better to know now. Michael’s faced a decade and a half of suburban careful not-fighting. He knows himself well enough to know that meeting problems head on works better for him._ _

__Gavin lets himself be pulled into sitting. He grabs his 7-Up and goes to swig it and almost chokes himself before he remembers there’s a straw in the can. He tosses the sticky straw onto the table and finishes the can in several big gulps. Michael knows the entire cafeteria’s talking about him, but all he can hear is Gavin’s time-stall silence. It’s enough to drive him crazy. Let Ryan be the mad one, for once._ _

__“That was... That was probably not the best way to go about it, I think. And I think I know why you’re looking for attention too. But we don’t have to talk about it. I know you don’t wanna. You avoided it with me and Ryan like fifty billion times already.”_ _

__Michael doesn’t care what Gavin or Ryan think about him being all passive in the face of rough sex. He cares about if Gavin’s mad at him now. If he hates him. If Michael doesn’t like the idea of Gavin being sad, he fucking can’t stand the idea of Gavin being disgusted by him. And he could tell Gavin the truth, that the free kissing booth wasn’t a choice. But the problems there are hydra headed, fucking endless and with a maximum of bloodshed. At least this way Gavin just thinks that he’s an attention whore who doesn’t care about the method._ _

__“I’m not gonna do it again,” he tries. He’s pretty sure it’s a promise he can keep._ _

__“I don’t even know what part you’re saying it to.” Gavin sighs. “We’ve got five minutes until the bell. You should probably wipe your face. Unless the lipstick smears are part of the show.”_ _

__Fucking Christ._ _

____

***

Michael’s got a graphing paper and a pencil in hand. Technically not woods class supplies, but Ms OConnell gave him a stack of the grid paper early in the semester. She said if he couldn’t think spatially naturally, be creative and math oriented at the same time, sketching on graphing paper would be the next best thing. Michael plans to either figure out what the legs of his table should look like or stare until his eyes bleed.

It’s not the first time he’s spent the class contemplating rather than making cuts. Ms OConnell’s cool with it. She doesn’t assume he’s purposely wasting time, but she doesn’t interrupt his thought process to check his progress. It’s like she trusts him or something. She doesn’t bother him this time either. Which is nice, because Michael’s already having trouble concentrating. Normally he’d be sitting with his head propped up to cut out the visual distraction of twenty five other students wandering the room, but with his face red and painful to touch he can’t use that aid. 

In the end it’s not Ms OConnell that interrupts him. It’s the intercom crackling on. 

“Michael Jones report to guidance. Michael Jones to the guidance office.”

It’s at this point in high school based movies and television that the rest of the classroom lets out a rolicking group ‘ooooh’. Life isn’t a movie though, and so there’s quiet muttering and a general attempt to observe him while not getting caught. Michael hears one comment that he’s pretty sure is from Jackson Boyd, notorious gambling addict. He’s trying to hustle bets on whether or not Michael’s about to be expelled. Michael doesn’t know what he’ll do if that happens. He wants to believe he’d be noble enough to not put Gavin in a terrible position, but he just doesn’t know.

Michael looks over at Ms OConnell and shrugs. He shouldn’t be leaving her class now. It’s bad enough that he misses half every even day on the school day cycle. Missing on odd days is just disrespectful, and she’s too badass to deserve that. But it’s not exactly his choice to bail on her. She has to understand that, right?

Gavin’s in the hall outside the guidance office. Leaning against a random locker, of course. Heaven fucking forbid the kid ever stand up of his own volition.

“Seriously?” Michael demands. They’re cool. Or cool-ish. Or at least they are from his point of view. Whatever, they are cool enough that Michael can comfortably call Gavin out for doing shit he shouldn’t. Such as, for example, asking to go to the bathroom and instead sprinting down the stairs to gatecrash his boyfriend’s potential execution. 

“I was a witness.”

“So was the entire school, you stupid idiot! That’s the whole fucking point!”

“You leading the way, or am I?”

Fucking Christ. Fucking stubbornass annoying fucktard boyfriends. Plural, because Ryan would be doing the exact same thing if he was here. 

The guidance office is a busy place. There’s a secretary specific to guidance, and Inside the office are five inner offices; a guidance counsellor for last names beginning with A-G, H-M, N-S, T-Z, plus a college counsellor. Add to that a secretary specifically assigned to this room, because a lot of parents want to make appointments rather than miss the whole day, and at least half the students need solid blocks of time to wail about university.

Since Michael hasn’t changed his name since last time, his counsellor is still Mr Watson. The outer office has a U of moulded seating, which is half full of students. Michael throws himself into a seat nearest Mr Watson’s closed door. Gavin sits beside him, utterly ignoring the way Mrs Henderson is about ready to behead him for not signing in. 

Michael still hasn’t figured out if Henderson has a buzzer on her side of the counter, if there’s some sort of charm, or if Mr Watson is just goddamn psychic. Whatever the method, the facts are he sits trying to not fidget as Gavin squirms up a storm for less than three minutes before Mr Watson’s door opens and the man’s six foot three shadow looms over him.

Gavin stands up when Michael does. Michael tilts his head and raises his eyebrows, a non-verbal _sit the fuck down_. Gavin ignores him, the stubborn ass. Michael reacts the way he always does when Gavin’s a dork; physically. He splays his hand and lightly shoves his boyfriend until his ass hits uncomfortably curved seat. Only when it’s done does Michael realise that out of Gavin’s-totally-cool-with-this-and-does-the-same-thing context, physical abuse instead of using his words in front of a guidance counselor was probably not the best idea. It’s too fucking late now though, so he just follows the man into his office.

Unlike the outer office, Mr Watson’s is painted a cool shade of light green. Michael’s distracted himself more than once during a terrible conversation about realism wondering if the hulking black man played interior designer and did it himself, down to picking the frames for the generic as fuck motivational posters. He’s internet-enlightened enough to know that gender stereotypes shouldn’t matter to him, but fuck it, because the mental image of a man large enough to barely fit down an aisle in Home Depot comparing celedon and spring’s breath paint swatches makes him laugh.

There are three seats to choose from. They’re all the same; the kind that’s vinyl covered foam with a silver-plated metal frame. What type is not the choice. The choice is how close to sit to the guidance counsellor. It’s a headgame, really. If you sit in the seat closest to the counsellor you’re not scared of what they have to tell you, either because they’ve got no proof or you already know what they’re going to say. But if you don’t want to hear it and you sit as close to the door as possible Watson will realise why and he might soften the blow.

Michael sits in the middle seat. He knows what Mr Watson is going to say, he doesn’t want to hear it, and the middle seat has the least amount of picked away vinyl.

“It’s come to my attention that you kissed, well, rather quite a lot of people.”

The _you think_ is on the tip of his tongue. Michael doesn’t let it out past his lips. They’ve already done him in today, might as well not drive the last blow himself.

“It’s also been reported that you did it as a kind of protest to treatment you’ve perceived as unfair.”

The door slams open, carooming into the motivational poster wall. The resulting thud is drowned out by Gavin shouting, “do you perceive the unfair that’s all over his bollocking face?”

“Mr Free, I know you care a great deal for Michael, but I’m certain I called him, not you, to my office.”

“Of course I care about him, he’s my sodding boyfriend. And maybe you know me, but I know him. And I know he’s not going to complain about this to an adult, he’s just going to make big flailing scenes. But you know who might care about the gay bashing of my boyfriend? Master Ramsey.”

Michael wants to throw his head into his hands. He resists the temptation, if only for Gavin’s sake. Maybe if he pretends Gavin didn’t threaten an authority with magic, if he doesn’t react to the threat, Mr Watson will pretend to have not heard it.

Mr Watson looks Gavin dead in the face, one hundred percent eye contact. “What is it, exactly, you are saying?”

It’s a moment of possible escalation. The kind of moment that’s in every dramatic movie. It’s not quite the Magicians War horror trope, but Stupid/Brave Person Talks Back To Unstable Magician has it’s own league of movies. Michael fucking prays -doesn’t believe in anything anymore but still fucking prays- that Gavin will back down, not rise up. Because the next step involves calling Geoff to rein in his wayward journeyman, and calling magicops in case Gavin really goes off the bend. In this post-Forsyth Prep world, authorities don’t take chances anymore.

Thank fuck Gavin backs off. “Just that you can’t have homophobic abuse in a public school, right? Someone could contact the media.”

Mr Watson nods. He’s still grave, he nearly always is, but it’s a safer seriousness now. “I promise I’ll look into any discrimination. But for now you need to give me and Michael a chance to talk. Privately.”

“Fine!” Gavin’s still shouting, but he’s also acquiescing, so Michael thinks it counts. So does Mr Watson, who doesn’t comment when Gavin slams the door on the way out.

“Do you have anything you want to say?”

There’s no way Michael can tell Gavin that Timothy hexed him to be the stereotypical gay whore. If he does Gavin will do one of two things. 

Option A is Gavin falling back to his post-parental eviction ‘we’ve cost you too much’ bullshit. For a good few weeks Gavin was depressed and determined to blame himself and Ryan for Michael getting booted, never mind that Michael would have come out at some point, and his parents would have reacted the same way at seventeen or thirteen or thirty five. Thankfully Ryan eventually stoked that sadness into rage, an emotion Michael’s a lot better at dealing with. But if Gavin’s silly fucked up brainspace decides that Michael got hexed because Gav demands PDA, that the homophobic attack was because of homosexual behaviour he’ll feel guilty again.

Option B is getting into an escalating magic war. Timothy isn’t a magician, as far as Michael knows. Juno Bailey only has a few, and they’re pretty easy to pick out of a crowd thanks to international accents. But all that means is that Timothy paid a magician to do it. So Gavin will hunt down that magician and hex him for forcing an ugly situation on Michael, and Random Magician will hex Gavin for getting so mad about something that’s just a job, and then Gavin will hex RM again for hexing him. Magician War is a horror trope, but it’s a horror trope like natural disasters is a horror trope, or serial killers, not exorcism or evil creatures living in sewers. It’s scary because it’s only an inch away from realism.

Both of the options are crap. Crap for Ryan in the first, crap for the city, the state or even the world in the second. Crap for Gavin in both. Michael refuses to be the cause. And the truth is telling the guidance counsellor is as good as telling Gav. There’s not a chance in hell he’s not doing an eavesdropping spell right now. Juno Bailey has basic school spells, according to the Wiki entry on it; no bullying, no cheating, no drug dealing. No spying on others beyond closed doors would make sense. But there’s only so many variations on a theme a public school can pay for, and the entire point of magic is finding the as of yet unclosed loophole.

“I dunno? I think Gavin covered it? You can’t really trust adults to save you. You gotta take care of yourself. If I hadn’t done that everyone would have seen the bruising and assumed I got into a bare knuckle brawl because the kick-out-kid is like that. Now they know. Now the GSA might write up a new poster based on my poor experience and everyone will just leave me alone.”

Honestly, at this point that’s all Michael wants from senior year. He doesn’t give a shit about his classmates or who’ll write in his yearbook, he knows he’s not going to have a big grad walk then trashed at prom moment, he doesn’t have any anxiety or exhilaration about acceptance or rejection letters coming in, he’s already sure his relationship will last post graduation, and his courses are okay, but not what he’d have chosen if interest was the criteria, not lifestyle. He just wants to be left alone.

“We can’t condone that kind of activism,” Mr Watson says. His voice is stern but his eyes are softer than they could be, so his next words probably won’t be get the fuck out. “From your perspective it made sense, but what about the teenagers who didn’t want to be kissed?”

“Yeah, I know.” That includes himself, so yeah, he goddamn knows.

“I know you can’t attend detention, and this first offense doesn’t warrant heavier deterrents. But I will be requiring you to write a two thousand word essay on consent. And keep your lips to yourself!” 

Michael nods. It doesn’t sound fun, and it’ll be a pain in the ass to get it done, but it’s better than any alternative.

“I will be looking into discrimination though, Michael. If it’s happening, it’ll change.”

Cynical at core, Michael doubts that. The people that may or may not say something will lean towards not saying anything for the next few weeks. But the Timothys of the world, those like his family? They don’t know how to change. Still, Michael says thanks. Empty promise or not, Michael knows the man cares, at least a little. You don’t stay until seven at night helping a scared kid rearrange their life to be self-sufficient if you don’t care. That kind of action is beyond job parameters.

“That fucking ponce. I’ll kick his bloody arse if you want me to.” 

Gavin is fuming when Michael sees him. He’s actually pacing. Michael hasn’t seen Gavin at this level of agitation in a _while_. At least he’s ranting in the hallway, not in the outer office. Michael’s fairly sure the beady eyed secretary monitors death threats. The real question is if the exit was Gavin’s own choice or if the woman kicked him out.

“Thinking I’m some kind of magical menace, as if Geoff hasn’t taught me right. I’ll kick his arse. No, I’ll hex his pants so that they feel like he’s getting his arse kicked. Or I’ll-”

Michael crosses his arms over his sloganed t-shirt. “Gav, you realise you’re proving his point, right?”

“Huh?”

“You’re listing off magic threats,” Michael points out. He’s like eighty percent sure Gavin wouldn’t _actually_ go after Mr Watson, but journeymen are notoriously loyal to their masters. The destined pairing thing, probably. 

“Yeah, but-”

“Look, it’s no big deal. I just have to write an essay about consent.”

Gavin goes silent for a second then shrugs. “Got a bit of a point there.”

There’s no reason to bother going back to woods. There’s less than ten minutes before the bell and all the shops are on the other side of the school, near the parking lot. Gav though...

“You need to return from your ‘bathroom break’ now?” Michael asks, tossing in some mocking air quotes for good measure.

“Nah. I just walked out, didn’t I. I’m sure I’ve got detention. Simpson’s a tit like that.”

Michael has to say something. He doesn’t say it often, but Gavin deserves it. “Thanks. For fighting for me. And not breaking up with me. And threatening someone for me.”

“Well I had to, didn’t I? Ryan’s not here.”

“Still though. It was stupid, but still.”

Gavin’s unexpected response is sweeping him into a hug. Gavin’s grip is strong and he smells especially good. Some part of Michael really fucking needed this. He kind of just wants to fall to his knees and grab Gavin by the legs and have Gavin grab him by the hair and just never let go. But that’s not the way life works, so after one last less than subtle inhale he disengages. The comfort diminishes but surprisingly doesn’t go away completely.

The relief doesn’t last long though. In fifth period -last period on odd school days- phys ed Michael finds out he’s got a nickname. Before he was just the angry kid who might have fucked with his parents. Bad, but nothing distinct enough for a title. Now he’s Two Hundred, that being a rough estimation of how many people he kissed over the lunch hour.

Michael’s a fucking mess of emotions when he gets to his locker at 2:40 and Gavin’s not waiting. Surprise, because it’s not like Gavin usually gives a crap about physics and the skipped days he’s racking up, and today of all days seems like it would be the day Gav decides something else is more important. Happiness that Gavin is going to last period, because maybe that way he won’t fail. Envy that Gavin actually can go to class and then go home and do whatever he wants, while Michael has to work the next six hours. Gratitude that he’s not going to have to talk to Gavin again for at least a while about the ‘choice’ he made at lunch. Relief that Gavin hasn’t figured out that he’s been hexed. Bitterness that Gavin thinks that he would do that in the normal course of the day. And underneath it all, there’s this nasty longing for being out of his mind the way he only gets when he gets Ragequitting video games furious or... or last night.

But that’s not going to happen. He’s firmly inside his own skull now, and his thoughts are fucking burying him.

In a type of desperate compromise to get all the shit in his head under control Michael texts Ryan. It’s not like he’ll have all the answers. He’s only two years older, he’s no wise yenta. He’s just someone Michael can trust, who’s not Gavin. Gav, who Michael wants and doesn’t want and loves and hates right now. 

**hey can you come to work after your class?**

**i dunno i’ll try.**

Gavin’s not waiting at his locker. Gavin doesn’t appear on the horizon in the crowded hallway. Gavin doesn’t show up when the bell has rung and he’s alone in the hallway. Michael’s officially going to work alone. 

Time management ever being the name of the game, Michael decides to use his bus ride to start brainstorming his punishment. He doesn’t need much of a thesis statement, there’s only one real opinion on consent. He’s not exactly writing a persuasive essay here.

Michael realises pretty quickly that jotting down notes for his eventual two thousand words is a mistake. The shit that went down earlier is still too close. 

The problem is it’s impossible to write about the consent choices of others without thinking about the nature of hexing. Sexual consent violation is a thing, is the thing that Mr Watson thought he was mildly committing. But there’s two other kinds of non-consent that Michael can see, which is good objectively because three topic statements will make enough paragraphs to get his wordcount. There’s institutional lack of agency; when doctors decide what’s right for their patients and gender bias like how hard it probably was for Ms OConnell to get her first woodcraft job, and basically everything to do with race. And then there’s magical consent fuckery, his delightful current problem.

Magicians- Gavin, Geoff, fucking all of them- are capable of three kinds of magic. More than capable, they happily perform three kinds of magic. Spells and charms are the customer’s idea of what they want for themselves. Hexes are to give others what they don’t want. Michael doesn’t know the actual stats, he’ll have to look them up at school tomorrow morning, but it’s something like forty five percent of middle aged people have been hexed more than three times? Some careers and lifestyles make it more likely than others, but almost everyone’s experienced something.

To get this essay done Michael has to write about all three kinds of consent. He’s never been touched in the wrong way, and he’s a white male, so the first two don’t hurt to think about. But right now, three hours away from being compelled to make out with people in front of his boyfriend, hexing is just about the last thing he wants to think about.

Unfortunately once it’s in Michael’s head he can’t get it out. By the time he walks into Sweet Pulp he can’t stop thinking about all kinds of unwanted advances, and the legit chance that he’ll have a second go-round. Hell, he might even have to face Boss Level hexing. He has no idea how far Timothy’s magician might go. If Timothy’s dropped four figures Michael might end up kissing half of Texas. 

It’s completely shitty to think about, and his options are limited as hell. Basically all of them revolve around getting a magician of his own to set up a bunch of counters. Gavin’s out for all the obvious reasons. Geoff might do it for free, if Gavin’s all-trusting opinion about the mysterious old fart is actually true, but Gavin won’t let Michael get to the man, at least not without a hella good reason, and again, Michael can’t fucking divulge. And every other magician will demand the cash cash money, which he has fucking none of.

He’s screwed, basically.

He’s also early. Normally he’d be using this time to get something accomplished, like maybe pulling out the grid paper to reattempt to imagine his table legs. Ms OConnell deserves it, after he was forced to bail earlier. Today isn’t a normal day though, and Michael can’t bring himself to tug his binder out of his school backpack.

What he ends up doing is sitting at the table reserved for employees unless it’s especially busy. Michael crosses his arms on the table, fingertips tucked into crooks of elbows, and jams his nose against the top of his wrist. Eyes open he can’t see much beyond his hoodie cuffs. Eyes closed everything goes away.

His retreat is interrupted by someone yelling at him to change and clock in. His mental health break is over. He’s gotta do customers and smiles and people giving him ridiculous combinations of change because they’ve done the math wrong when they want a perfect nickel or quarter or dollar back. And Ryan’s not pulling into the parking lot, even though it’s four and he knows Michael starts at four and he should be here, damn it. He promised.

Michael kind of wants to cry. It’s been a long day. He won’t. That’s not who he is. But he can’t deny the friendly hug Lindsay swoops him into makes his throat catch.

“Hungover?”

“I’d have to live in a giant sack of feces for my day to get any shittier.”

“Sucks,” she offers.

“Can we switch? Can I be dishwasher?” He just doesn’t feel like being around people.

“Fuck it. Go ahead,” Lindsay flashes him a smile. “It’s the same pay, what do I care?”

The night doesn’t get much better from there. Yes Michael’s off the hook for having to interact with customers but that doesn’t mean everything’s all sunshine. For one thing Ryan’s nowhere to be seen.

The longer the evening goes on the more it grates on him. If Ryan wasn’t going to come he should have just said no, not today. It’s not like Michael would have tearily accused him of not being there for him or some shit. But this waiting, fucking edgy anticipation shit sucks.

Finally, fucking christing finally, it’s ten. He can get out, he can _leave_ , he can fuck off and be alone and the entire world can fuck off. Michael’s never shoplifted before but maybe he can get a 24 of beer under his hoodie because fuck is he done with the world today. Drinking won’t make the universe disappear, but it’ll make it wobbly and funny and hey- maybe he’ll drunk dial Ryan and call him the fuck out. That’ll be cathartic as hell.

“You okay to go home alone?” Lindsay asks, pushing the code for the alarm. Once it’s armed they’ve got thirty seconds before it goes off and the company calls their boss. Since that’s just a shit-show for all concerned, Michael legs it, answering her at the same time.

“What?” The question doesn’t even make sense. Michael always goes home alone, unless it’s one of the nights Gav or Ryan has come to hang out. Or both. He wouldn’t say no to both right now. He can be mad and want them at the same time. Like that one guy says, he contains multitudes.

“You look like you’re about to off yourself.”

Michael snorts. “Don’t be stupid. There are no achievements on XBox for ending your own character.”

Well actually, there are. But his point stands. That’s not something he’d ever do to himself.

“Come see a movie with me,” she offers, stalling him from his walk to the bus stop.

“Not that I don’t like a good movie. You’ve seen our in-work dates enough to know that. But part of that is that they’re free. Theater movies...not so much.”

“So it’s not a no to the concept, it’s a no to the cost.” Lindsay nods to herself. “I could lie and say they have cheap eleven pm movies on Thursdays like they do on Tuesday afternoons, but I’m pretty sure you’d see through my clever ruse.”

Tricking him into it would be stupid, Michael politely doesn’t say. Considering how if he’d fallen for it and gone expecting a two dollar show and saw the normal nine dollar tickets he’d have to walk right back out? Yeah, stupid plan. That said, if she’s trying to trick him into it, either Lindsay really wants to spend another two hours with him, or she’s really worried that he might do something stupid if alone. Whatever the reason, it makes him more casual on his second refusal. “I dunno if I can.”

“It’ll be a date. I’ll pay for it.”

“If it’s a date shouldn’t I-?” Michael’s a guy, isn’t that what guys do on heterosexual dates? Pay for shit and open doors and beat people to death for daring to claim the seats you’re about to?

“No. We both make the same and I don’t have your expenses.”

“You’re saving for university,” he points out. See? He fucking listens when people speak, even if most of his replies are profanities and smartassery.

“Look, like all ‘chivalry’ it’s actually fucked up. The reason men pay for dates is because that way women owe them at the end of the night. It’s gross.”

“I’ll consider myself fuckin’ told, then. Lead the way to your car, unless you want me to take the bus and meet you.” It would be weird if she did, but she’s buying his ticket, so he’d do it.

Lindsay’s car is music themed. Seriously. Like if it was a GTA custom or something. It’s not airbrushed but there are three bumper stickers and window decals and a miniature upright piano dangling from the rear view mirror. And the passenger seat has about seven CD books. If they were piled in a tower it could probably make the head rest.

“Seriously? Are you seriously serious with this?”

Lindsay pauses awkwardly balanced half in half out of her car. “What, are you a vinyl snob?”

“Do I look like a fucking hipster to you?” The only things Michael likes about hipsters are the skinny jeans, and the guys with cool facial hair. Ryan’s got some pretty good scruff, and one day Gav’s gonna look amazing with facial hair.

“Well you’re wearing a shirt that says ‘save the trees wipe your ass with an owl’ so I’m gonna go with no.”

Once Lindsay gives him the all clear Michael sits carefully in the passenger seat. The tower of books is pinned between his calves. That strategy doesn’t last long; they fall on the first turn. Michael makes a mental note to not move his feet the entire time he’s in her car. He can’t exactly afford to replace a Metallica discography.

At a red light Lindsay takes her hands off the wheel. She twists to face him as much as she can without breaking her spine. “You get that I was serious, right? About this being a date?”

“Well you’re hot and funny and you listen to my gambling tips so that’s pretty great. I’d date you.” Michael hasn’t dated a girl in a while, but it’s not like he’s got anything against the concept. Bisexual with a heavy inclination towards men still leaves room for a kickass woman. As long as he does the same condoms to ward off babies thing as Ryan there’s no special issue.

“Good, then.” She starts driving as the light changes. From his position Michael can see half of a self-satisfied smile. It makes her look pretty, now that he’s letting himself really notice. 

“Did you have a movie in mind?”

“Usually only half are playing after ten.”

Michael glances at her. “Oh yeah? You know the theatre schedule?”

“I do this kind of a lot. Movies and music, media’s sort of my vice.”

“Wow, then you must really shit your pants about filmed concerts.”

“I can’t tell if you’re mocking me, and if you are-” Lindsay raises her arm to flip him off, “but they’re pretty sweet. All the lighting effects, none of the having beer spilled on you or tinnitus for two days.”

“Ringing ears can suck my dick,” Michael agrees. Which reminds him... “You noticed I got hit around the facial region, right?”

“I’m two months older than you, not sixty five years. I don’t have cataracts yet.”

“You sure you don’t wanna hold off on the first date selfies until I’m less fucked up?”

“Two things. One, it’s a few bruises, not your face melted off with a blowtorch. Two, if you can only see someone when they’re pristine you are a high maintenance asshole. Gender neutral, orientation neutral statement. Maybe some people get off on that, but not me. And that goes both ways.” 

“I look forward to going on our next date in sweats and uncombed hair.”

Lindsay eyeballs him. “You think I won’t, but you’re wrong.”

Michael cackles. He only slightly thinks she won’t. Mostly his opinion of Lindsay is she does what the fuck she wants, and that just generally happens to involve looking made up and hot. If she wants to rock the just outta bed look, who the fuck is he to tell her not to? Shit, tonight is the second wearing of this t-shirt.

After a quick discussion at the box office aided by IMDB and free wifi, they decide on a fratboy comedy. Vince Vaughn is funny, what can he say? It started five minutes ago, but with previews and the now obligatory commercials that Michael can’t remember them having when he was a kid, but refuses to say that because he’s not geriatric, the actual film should start after they get seated. Besides, it’s not like they’re missing a lot of foreshadowing, plot, and intrigue.

“You like aisle, or the middle of a row? Michael’s of the opinion that aisles are for chumps but seeing a movie means compromise. Well, compromise or threatening to murder Gav if he doesn’t stop commenting on the technical aspects. The latest Transformers is shit because it’s shit, not because Michael Bay should have used different camera techniques.

“Woah. Hold up, boy.” Lindsay pats his chest. “We gotta get snacks before we go anywhere.” 

Even before being on a shoestring budget Michael never wasted money on concession stand food. Sneak that shit in with deep cargo pants pockets or starve until the food court afterwards. Now that he’s broke-ass-broke at all times, a three dollar drink isn’t gonna happen. Doesn’t mean it’s not interesting to watch Lindsay practically buy out the counter though.

Once they’re sitting -middle seat, not aisle, thank fuck- Lindsay’s snacks turns into a horrorshow. Nibs go into her cotton candy, a crushed handful of pretzels into her nachos, and Milk Duds, peanut M&Ms and Pop Rox all go into her popcorn.

“That popcorn’s the sickest thing I’ve ever seen.” Michael doesn’t bother to whisper. There are only two other couples in the theatre, and they’re widely spread out. Michael could probably shoot a gun and they wouldn’t turn around to shush him.

Lindsay shakes her head. “Try it before you Gordon Ramsey it.”

Michael doesn’t really want to try it. Because it’s the _sickest fucking thing he’s ever seen_. But he loves bitching more than he loves the sanctity of his taste buds, so he grabs a handful of the destroyed popcorn and shoves it in his mouth. A few chomps and a swallow and he’ll have full rights to continue complaining like some dumbass cooked the steak well done instead of medium rare. The people that Gordon Ramsey yells at always deserve it. He should know, Gavin’s made him watch enough episodes of Kitchen Nightmares.

Michael swallows, and it’s fucking hideous, as he knew it would be. Deciding that etiquette is for bitches -and he knows that Lindsay agrees, they had that conversation already- he leans over her to grab her megasized drink from the cup holder. His hand barely makes it around the waxed cardboard, it’s ridiculous. He sticks her straw in his mouth and takes a few long sips. Michael’d love to gargle and spit, but obviously that option is not available. Not unless he chooses to run to the bathroom and gag, and that seems a bit more than necessary. It’s nasty popcorn, not a piss-smoothie.

“Yeah, I thought you’d think it’s bad. I have cousins my age. Fucking up my junk food was the only way they didn’t snag it.” Lindsay laughs. 

Michael flips her off. 

Lindsay laughs harder, teeth shining in the rapid flashes of movie light. It’s a mix of Ryan’s disaffected cruelty and Gavin’s enthusiasm, and Michael likes it. He puts the soda the floor, not willing to play the five minute careful wedging game he saw her do earlier. Hands free, he can pull her in for their first kiss. 

Her mouth tastes like sugary death. It’s kind of hilariously bad, actually. Something they’ll remember for a long time. A meet cute, is what Michael’s pretty sure his mom called it when talking about her romance books. But the taste quickly takes a back seat to her warm hand curling into the hair lower than the edge of his beanie, to the softness of her lips. To the way she smells, because somehow six hours of cutting and pulverising fruit hasn’t worn off on her the way Ryan and Gav say they can smell it on him.

Lindsay shifts back upright, face split with a grin. She gently pushes Michael until he’s firmly in his own seat. “Awesome. Now focus on the way Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson want to bang each other. I didn’t pay thirty bucks for nothing.”

Michael laughs hard, vindicated. He’s not the only one who sees it. It’s freakin’ impossible to watch Wedding Crashers without expecting them to screw.

***

They’re halfway to his apartment when Lindsay throws out a suggestion. “I know a twenty four hour ice cream place.”

Michael raises his eyebrows. “Are you going to put pork chops or fuckin’ rutabagas in it?”

“Shut up, asshole,” Lindsay replies, the humor in her voice taking away any negative impact of her words.

“Man, I really friggin shouldn’t. It’s like one, and I gotta get up at seven. Sugar rush is probably a shitty idea.” 

“Can we at least make out for fifteen minutes outside your apartment?”

“Shit yeah we can.”

Abruptly Lindsay shoves open her door and catapults out. Michael’s just about to shout to ask what the fuck is wrong when the left side back door opens and she reappears.

“Come on man, we’ve only got fifteen minutes.”

Michael all at once understands the leaping around. He matches her speed scrambling into the back of her car. 

“Any rules?” It’s fuckin’ gentlemanly to ask, and it’s one piece of chivalry -and common decency- that will never die. At least with his kind of man. Michael can’t speak for all the creepers and fuckboys, except to say they need to be smacked down.

“We only have fifteen minutes, so clothes stay intact. Groping over them is fine. Encouraged, even.” Lindsay finishes with the hot as fuck grin she’s been flashing for the last two hours.

Michael doesn’t need to be told twice. He adjusts them both so her back’s against the flat of the seat. Then he goes to it; falls upon her like she’s a feast. Michael lets his hands roam. One stays on the curve of Lindsay’s neck because he’d bite there if his mouth wasn’t already busy. The other can’t seem to make up its mind. There’s her inseam, her hip, her ass. Not to mention her chest. Boobs are pretty fucking novel at this point, after years of two very male boyfriends. 

Lindsay doesn’t hold back either. Her hands are mostly still on his back, but her leg is angled to press up against his dick. The pressure is of great effect. Michael’s got a semi when Lindsay’s phone alarm goes off. 

“Time for responsible boys to be in bed.”

“Are you fucking serious? You set an alarm? I didn’t even notice!”

She pats his forehead condescendingly. “Yeah I’m not surprised.”

“I fucking hate alarms,” Michael bitches as he pushes himself off Lindsay and back upright. It takes a heavy hand to shove his dick into a position that doesn’t bother him. Zippers are very cruel beasts when you’re turned on and not in a position to drop trou and jerk it.

“Yeah well you’re the one with the time limit, so. Anyway, wanna do this again in a few days?”

“Yeah.” Damn straight Michael does. The first rule of polyamory is don’t compare your lover to your other lover, but Lindsay’s great in all these ways that compliment and contrast with what he already has. He definitely wants to date the shit out of her. “I’ll see about what day works for Gavin and Ryan.”

“Wait, what?”

“Gav and Ryan? You know the two other people in this relationship?”

Her brow furrows. “Uh, no? This relationship’s me and you.”

“But when you date me you date them.”

Lindsay shakes her head. A strand of hair sticks to her bottom lip and she doesn’t pull it away. Michael wants to, wants to touch her face and tuck the gleaming red behind her ear and go back to kissing. But he can’t. Not if they have to have this conversation first.

“That’s obviously not true. Seeing as, you know, it was just me and you rocking out the hella cliche date of movie. And shit Michael, we’re in the back seat of a car. We’re parked and making out in the back seat of the car. The only way it could get more datey is if there was a moonlit mountain somewhere.”

“I’m not saying it wasn’t a great date! I had a really good time! That’s why I want Gavin and Ryan to join us next time.”

“I don’t- You can’t say that you need them to be here. You’re hard, and I don’t mean to sound like a rapist, but seriously, I know you liked this.”

“I’m not saying I’m not bi. That has fucking nothing to do with it. I’m saying that if you date me you also have to date Ryan and Gavin. That’s how it works.” 

Michael doesn’t begrudge Gavin his side relationship with Geoff. Journeyman-Master is a relationship that no one else outside that bubble can understand. It’s also impossible to say Ryan doesn’t deserve the freedom of experiencing all college has to offer, one night stands and walks of shame included. He just knows he can’t do the same. Nothing about hoarding a relationship away from his boys sounds appealing to him. Not even for the sake of the potential of another great lover.

Judging from the look on her face, the terms don’t work for Lindsay. Her next words are only confirmation on what Michael’s already figured out. “I knew you were with them. I’m not retarded. I just thought it was like a V. Usually it’s one of them or the other coming to work to see you, and when it’s both they still focus on you. I thought I’d be another spoke. They’re okay when they visit but I don’t think I can date them. I don’t... it’s not that I don’t like them I just... Michael, I-”

He inhales, holds it, and exhales like his whole body is deflating. “The thing that’s between us and between me and Ryan and me and Gavin, and between them. It’s not between either of them and you.”

“I don’t want to date them. I could be friends with them if me and you dated? Couldn’t we just try that? The three of us could hang out like, like some fucking sister-wives on TLC or whatever.”

Michael rubs the heels of his palms over his face. He needs the reinvigoration if he’s going to get through this. His left hand hurts the fuck out of his bruised cheek, but he doesn’t stop.

“There’s a difference between Mormon poly and non-religious. Like it’s even called different things; it’s polygamy and polyamory. You guys being all chaste and pleasant to each other would be awful.” Michael shudders to think of it. Fucking horrible in his head, and his imagination isn’t exactly top shelf, he’s not Gavin or Ms OConnell. There’s no way it wouldn’t be worse in real life. “Lindsay, I can’t do it the religiony way. I just can’t.”

“I can’t date guys I don’t wanna eventually bang, just to make you happy,” she replies. The words could be mean, in a toneless context. In a text it would be like braille-reading shards of glass. Michael can see her face though, notices her pauses, where her voice catches. It hurts her to say, as much as it hurts him to hear.

“So, what? Do we just part ways and never look back? Like it’s some fucking English class book or something?”

“Michael, come on. It doesn’t have to be all classic lit tragic. We fuckin’ work together, like three shifts a week.”

All Michael picks up in that statement is how shitty and awkward it’s going to be spending six hours together multiple times a week.

“Dude, seriously? That’s the fuckin’ face that made me take you out in the first place. We don’t have time to break into a movie theatre to refresh the happiness, you need to crash.”

Michael picks that thread up like it’s a bungee cord; the only thing keeping him alive. “Yeah, I really do. Need to crash. So yeah. I’m gonna. Uh. Go and shit.”

He scrambles out of the car, both backpacks looped over one arm, and slams the door before bolting for the lobby of the apartment building. He’s halfway there before he hears a second and third door slam, meaning Lindsay’s transferred from the back seat back to the front. Michael’d worry about if she knows how to get home from here, except he’s busy jamming the elevator button forty seven times before the doors finally part, and then he’s busy stripping to boxers, and then he’s busy crawling the fuck into bed and wishing everything would just stop being so everything.


	4. Friday

The alarm wakes him up by saying _my life is a progress bar_. 

Normally it’d be funny. Ryan’s anguish when he spent half his last dorm wide Gaming Day loading updates was hilarious at the time. But with things uncomfortably up in the air with his boyfriends Michael’s not feeling the humor. Not only did neither of them say anything to him last night, including good night, neither have texted him good morning either. Plus he’s insanely tired, considering it was quarter to two when he finally got in, stripped and flung himself into bed. Still, because he’s a masochist he lingers until the second alarm. 

_People like grapes!_

Yeah Gav, they sure the fuck do, as bullshit flavouring in soda or frozen concentrate. But grapes are like seventy percent water, which makes for crappy liquid smoothies, so Sweet Pulp’s never gonna have a Grape Madness drink. Sorry boi.

From there it’s the normal routine. Easy enough to do when it’s what to do every day. Even with his eyes crusted with sleep he manages to prepare a lunch and a dinner and get dressed. Three pairs of socks left, now, he _really_ needs to do the fucking laundry.

Michael falls so back into routine that he even ends up with bread in the toaster before he remembers he has a delicious plagiarized Count Chocula. Too fucking bad for him, since he might as well be kicking himself in the face if he’s wasting food. Thanks to the keyboard smash grocery store though, he has new and interesting toppings. Like four different kinds of jam. Gavin would be impressed, at least until he inevitably gagged after dipping his pinky into one of them and tasting it. Gavin’s got the weakest gag reflex Michael’s ever seen, and the jams are all odd indie flavours. Shit even his work doesn’t have; elderberry, vanilla pear, maple cranberry, red pepper plum. 

Putting vanilla pear jam on toast isn’t _that_ weird of an edible life choice. It’s not like Michael’s smearing relish or pudding on the crisp bread. It doesn’t taste that weird either. It’s actually sort of sweetly bland. The vanilla’s way stronger than the pear.

The morning bus is packed illegally full. Michael wouldn’t care, except for the motherfuckers who think it’s a good idea to drink their coffee while standing and holding onto a strap. Those time is money fuckers always care more about their cell phones and which contact is most likely to get them in a penthouse suite by stock market closing than watching for when the bus has to stop at a light. Michael dodges traffic jostled ventis no less than five times. Starbucks is a fucking blight. 

Michael makes it halfway to his locker before he stops in his tracks. Compelled, of course, because why would life ever give him a break? 

[The mutual victim is a guy. Michael gets a second to look at him before he’s too close to see anything but eyelashes.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3240428/chapters/7059323) He’s the same height but a lot further along in the facial hair game; his five o-clock shadow is out of control. And probably meant to be. It would go with the hipster outfit; a neon blue gramophone with darker tentacles coming out of it on a navy shirt, and a hexagon patterned unzipped hoodie. He’s even got square rimmed glasses.

Michael’s tongue is in Sir Random’s mouth and he hates it. Hates being out of control like this. In a lot of situations Michael can let the event take over with a primal sense of joy, dial back his brain and just feel it, but this is nothing like biking down a hill with his hands tied together. This isn’t going to end with him crashing into a bush and laughing hysterically.

“Uh, okay?” the guy says when it’s over. 

Michael doesn’t say anything, waiting for his body to make him walk five feet to the next guy in the hallway. But it doesn’t. Michael just stands there and it takes him a minute to realise he has a choice about it. Music Snob was his sole kissee. For now at least. Maybe he got lucky. Maybe Timothy didn’t have much cash left, after the debacle of yesterday. 

Once it clicks, Michael bolts to biomedics. The door’s open, the teacher signing thank you card after thank you card at her desk. Michael mutters a hello and lets the woman go back to the aftermath of her wedding party. In return for not harassing her about what the assignment is really asking from him, Mrs Zarunski lets him stay until the bell. It’s completely breaking homework finishing protocol, but fuck it. Michael needs soothing noisy drumbeats more than he needs to finish anything. The real problem is that hiding here doesn’t give Gavin a chance to talk to him. But would he anyway? It’s not like they’re fuckin’ reconciled. As far as Michael knows, everything’s gone to hell. Ryan bailed to prove a point, Gavin didn’t see him off, and neither have texted him since yesterday. 

Eventually the students slowly start trickling in. Michael tosses his binder onto the blue pen graffitied desk, but only at the very last second does he take his headphones off. 

It takes half the period to know he’s not off the hook. A handout and the three hole punch are going around. When he doesn’t accept the pass from behind quickly enough the guy attempts to get his attention with “hey, Two Hundred!”

Before Michael can turn and go off that he’s not going to answer to that fucking name and how about Darren shove the holepunch up his ass, Darren’s biffie corrects him. “Two Hundred and One, as of this morning.”

Michael doesn’t let himself groan and pull his beanie over his face. As far as the school’s concerned his rampant kissing is a political statement. The core rule of activism is don’t be ashamed, no matter how much havoc you wreak. Even though Michael hates this he needs to pull that attitude off. If he doesn’t questions start getting asked. Questions lead to Lets Break Up For Your Own Good Gavin, or Magician War Gavin. Luckily Michael’s never been one to fall to the ground and weep at the slightest hint of pressure.

Instead, keeping his back turned, Michael raises his right arm and flips off the vicinity. In the end he gets his sheet, already hole punched, passed to him by Victoria, the girl who sits in the desk next to him. She’s a theatre geek so she’s probably queer sympathetic. So that much has come to pass, at least. He’s now the LGBT cause of the week. Or maybe that’s next week’s cause, considering it’s already Friday. Maybe they’ll make posters over the weekend. Michael’s never been on a poster before. Maybe he should make a bucket list and write it on so he can cross it off.

Michael sits waiting for the shoe to drop, and in second period it does. He doesn’t get called over the PA to the guidance office. He gets Mr Watson’s hand falling down onto his shoulder in the hallway, as startling but ultimately expected as the fucking torch must have been to Frankenstein’s monster. He gets gentle but irresistible steering towards the admin office, like he’s a damn heeled dog. He gets a gesture towards the same cheap vinyl covered chairs the guidance office has, except these haven’t been peeled by emotionally disturbed teenagers. He gets Principal Loch’s pinstriped suit staring his ratty t-shirt down.

For the next twenty minutes Michael is very very quiet. A rare occasion, but in this case basically a necessity. The only thing Michael wants is to not make this worse. Since there are about half a dozen ways that can happen, the best thing to avoid all problems is to not say a word, not even in self-defense. 

It’s not until he’s out of the office and Mr Watson’s already heading towards his own office that Michael can softly mutter to himself. “Christ.”

Michael’s next move is to head for woods shop. Ms OConnell has a class full of freshmen. Michael doesn’t hesitate a second before interrupting. It’s not like any of them want to do anything but fuck around with the vertical belt sander anyway. That, or check Ms OConnell out like they want to be on CNN a year from now. Objectively speaking, Michael technically can’t blame the kids with the obvious hots for teacher. Her professional-casual shirt is navy with red and white anchors all over it, and it fits _well_ ; shows off her tattoos and matches her streaked hair. Subjectively speaking, if any one of these little fuckers says something while he’s in the room he’ll deck them for not showing some goddamn respect. What the fuck else does he have to lose?

“Hey,” he starts off. It’s a nice neutral opening. 

“Hi Michael.” 

Ms OConnell takes a few long steps backwards towards her adjoining office. Michael follows in her wake. It’s weird how one authority forcing you to follow can make you feel so fucking weak and out of control, and with another one it’s no big deal. 

She pauses once she’s inside. Her attention is split, half to the class beyond his shoulder, half on him. Michael can’t blame her. He knows he wouldn’t trust the fifteen year old chuckleheads with sandpaper, never mind a jigsaw.

“Look. It’s not like I like cutting your class. It’s my favourite, actually. But I’m not going to be in it for a while. I just got suspended for a week, just now.”

OConnell takes the news solidly. Like she’s a little bit disappointed, but she’s also willing to grant him the benefit of the doubt about if he had a good reason for doing whatever he did. Michael’s not even sure if she knows what happened yesterday. She hasn’t said anything, and Michael’s sure she’s the type of person to call someone out on sexual inappropriateness. 

“That’s going to bring down your class participation mark.”

“Yeah, I figured.” Realistically his grade dipping down doesn’t really matter, he’s not giving his transcript to any college anyway. It just sucks, that something he actually gives a crap about doing well at he’s going to damage through causes not his fault.

“But how about this? On one of your days off, bus to a lumber place. Ask an employee for information on ten different kinds of wood and text me what it’s best for. Wander the whole breadth of the store, don’t stay in one section. I also want photos. Do that and we’ll call it even.”

“That-” Michael sighs to get himself back under control. Helpful adults are the exception, not the rule. Even when they start out helpful, like Mr Watson, they can always turn on you. Getting all over-emotional and goopy at her isn’t going to help her not get tired of him. “That’s really cool. Thanks.”

“Lets be real, Michael. You’re one of ten, maybe twenty students that has the drive to actually use what you’re learning. If I’m preferential it’s because you deserve it.”

“Thanks,” he repeats, because what else is there to say?

OConnell not-so-subtly directs him out by stepping forward to make him politely move. Her tone changes from tender to listen-the-fuck-to-me the second she crosses that threshold. “Arnie, if you want to make a paddle you might start by understanding the concept of balance!”

Michael snorts as he adjusts his backpack on his shoulder and heads out. A fuckin’ paddle. Like White Hoodie’s in a frat house and sublimating his dick craving into pounding ass. What a stupid fucking freshman. There’s no way Michael was that sad when he was closeted. 

Once Michael leaves the woods shop though, it really hits him. He’s not allowed to be here. He needs to get the fuck out. He has to _leave_. 

There’s only one place that he wants to go. It’ll require a few transfers of bus to get there from Juno Bailey, take longer than any of his normal rides. Not to worry though. Michael’s got the system down, he can handle it.

Michael’s been in the sweet utopia that is an empty mid-day bus for five minutes before the obvious occurs to him. Sooner rather than later it’s going to be lunch. If Michael doesn’t show up for lunch -which is now a when, not an if, thanks administration- Gavin’s will pair that with Michael bailing on their morning hang out. Gavin’s going to assume hostilities, and while Michael knows they’re already at that point because Gavin hasn’t texted him in over a day, it’d be really fuckin’ swell to not exacerbate it by letting Gavin think the wrong thing.

He changes from slack grip on his phone to rolling it like a wave between his palms. He’s not sure what the hell to type. There’s really no way to drop this information in a good way. _You know how you were pissed I had to make a big show of kissing people and I promised not to do it again? I did it again, and the authority I told you to stop threatening on my behalf used it to hardcore punish me._ Yeah, that sounds like everything Michael shouldn’t say.

**you won’t see me at lunch. dunno if you heard but i kissed another guy and got expelled.**

**shit. suspended. i meant suspended.**

**i will be coming back.**

Gavin doesn’t reply. Michael wants to say it’s because he’s in class and can’t, but that’s probably complete bullcrap. There’s no way he doesn’t have his cell charmed to buzz unobtrusively. He’s not replying because he doesn’t want to.

Michael jams his beanie covered temple into the glass window of the bus and tries to focus on anything else. There’s enough time to deal with relationship drama when he gets to Ryan, he doesn’t need to fuckin’ mull on it now. Ryan’s going to be the obstacle anyway. Ryan’s gonna make him talk. At least when there’s problems with Gavin the solutions generally lay in waiting it out until Gav’s impulsivity distracts him. Ryan can cross his arms and plant his feet on the firm surface of eternity.

The only other thing that his brain will consider is his hex. Because the thing is, as much as he’d love to continue blaming homophobic douchecanoes, the more Michael thinks about it the less likely it seems. He doesn’t know Timothy’s financial status, obviously. But if you’re rich enough to pay a magician enough to make someone kiss two hundred strangers, why follow that with the cheapskate move of kissing only one person? Alternatively, Timothy’s as middle class as anyone else, and he only had a set amount of money to spend on fucking up his enemies. In that case, why spend almost all of it in one swoop? He could have made his point just as easily making Michael kiss one person every day. It might have taken him a few days more to get suspended, but it still would have happened.

But even if it’s _not_ Timothy, it has to be someone or something. It has to be a hex. Michael might be a crap son and a needy boyfriend and a mean, spiteful human being, but he’s not terrible in that specific way. He wouldn’t just throw himself at hundreds of people for no reason. Kissing Music Snob wasn’t a choice, even if he was Michael’s type.

It hits him like a bolt of lightning. He was eating a sandwich made from the spectacularly cheap ingredients sold at the keyboard smash grocery store. Every person he kissed yesterday was eating some kind of sandwich. He had toast for breakfast, the kid probably did too. What they have in common is the bread. He bought hexed bread.

He. Bought. Hexed. Bread.

Michael spends the rest of his second transfer trying to mine Google for information. He can’t remember what brand he bought, which makes it difficult, but it shouldn’t be impossible. Somewhere there should be a press release about product recall. ‘This bread makes you make out with people’ is a pretty good reason to lose a few million dollars telling the public to return it for a refund. It sucks to be a teenager in such a hexed condition, but what about elementary school kids eating a wholesome lunch? That swings into pedo territory disturbingly fast.

Not finding anything makes Michael more paranoid. Not writing a product recall leaves the company open to getting sued, unless they do something shady to cover their tracks. Erin Brockovich shady. And that means he still can’t tell Gavin. A lone brave journeyman versus the kind of corporate master magicians Wonderbread will have? It’s not even a question of outcome.

Ultimately nothing has changed. All the roots of his problems are still there, even if the petals have unfurled a little differently. Still, it makes him feel a little better about humanity. Yeah corporations are evil as fuck, and only concerned with the bottom dollar. That’s not new. The important part is homophobic ass Timothy Whoever wasn’t homophobic and evil enough to curse the queer kid that pissed him off. It’s enough. Day like today, it’s enough.

Michael’s pretty sure he knows Ryan’s schedule better than Ryan knows his and Gavin’s. None of them really visit the others at school, but at least Ryan’s classmates know about his life, making it acceptable for Michael and Gavin to occasionally be seen. It would be suspicious if Ryan came to Juno Bailey. He graduated without a chip on his shoulder, but he’s not the kind of clever honours student that teachers expect to see again, dropping nostalgic praise like _you were the best, I loved your educational crosswords_. If he showed up he’d be showing up for a student, and college-high school relationships are frowned upon no matter what the circumstances, because people are judgemental and stupid. There’s no reason for Ryan to know what Gavin has third period, but Michael knows Ryan has Westen Civ II, and he feels confident enough sit outside the door of the lecture hall and wait.

When it’s class change and Michael sees the sneakers he can’t help but yell “boosh!” 

Gavin’s got a thing about sneakers. He makes a habit of ‘upgrading’ the ones around him in another streak of anti-TOS behaviour. Better insoles to prevent flat feet, shoelaces with plastic end bits that never crack, the prevention of the inside heel wearing away. Aesthetic stuff too; Gavin likes to draw on the canvas with Sharpie and magically seal it so it doesn’t bleed when wet. There’s no other feet those shoes could belong to, besides Ryan. 

Michael’s eyes travel up his older boyfriend’s legs, pause where do you think, and land on his face. Even pissed about last night he enjoys the look of his guy.

The exclamation triggers Ryan, who wades through the exiting mass. “Michael, you’re here.”

“No shit. I need to fuckin’ talk. Do you have to go to voice one?”

Ryan bites the inside of his lower lip and quirks each side of his mouth a few times before answering. “I should, but I won’t.”

Michael falls in beside Ryan, a half a step behind so he can follow him. They don’t go to the dorms, or the cafeteria, Michael’s top choices for conversation where no one will pay attention. Instead it’s an outdoor area with a bunch of concrete benches and tables. More people are cutting through it than actually sitting and using it. Good enough for him.

Michael tosses himself onto one of the tables, feet planted on the bench. Ryan sits on the actual bench. “A lot’s gone down in the last day.”

“Yeah, I know. So busy you didn’t even call to say goodnight.”

Michael twists so he can see Ryan’s expression before looking away. If Ryan wants to fight, they can fight, but Michael’s not doing it this way. It’s too much like at home. “I was pissed, I’ll admit it. Don’t be passive aggressive, you know I hate that shit.”

“I’m not. I’m saying I know you were busy as fuck because it’s the first night you haven’t called me in months.”

“If I tell you something you promise to not tell Gav?” Michael asks. Just because Gavin can’t know about the hex doesn’t mean Michael has to keep it to himself. If Ryan knows the last two days haven’t been Michael’s fault, Michael’s _choice_ , he’ll be on his side, not Gavin’s. Michael could use an ally.

“No.”

“Okay, so-” Michael stops as Ryan’s response processes. “Wait. What? The question was a fuckin’ formality. Who answers no to a rhetorical question? And if you point out that _that_ was a rhetorical question I will fucking stab you.”

“Look. Chances are high I won’t tell Gav whatever it is. But I can’t say for certain.”

“Fine. Fuck you then. I’m not telling you.”

Other people would try to tempt him. Lure him out. Ryan shrugs. “Fine.”

“Seriously?” Sometimes Ryan can be so annoying Michael could fucking scream.

Ryan shrugs again. “I’m not going to lie to you and say I can for sure lie to Gavin. It depends on what it is. If you’re about to, I dunno, blow up your parents’ house for being terrible human beings, Gav should know so he can do a spell that will prevent the neighbours houses from going up in the blaze. Unless they’re shitbags too.”

This is not the conversation Michael wants to have right now. He knows what words he’ll say, what words Ryan will say, what words Gavin would say if he was here. He had this conversation a thousand times in the weeks after being thrown out. There’s no fucking point in it. So he goes in a completely new direction.

“Lindsay from work and I went on a date.”

“An actual date,” Ryan states. He’s more shocked than Michael would say is fair. It’s not like he’s repulsive. He can’t be, he’s already won himself two boyfriends.

“Yeah. I mean she paid but she also gave me a speech on the evils of chivalry so I’m pretty sure she would have even if I wasn’t poor.”

“How was it?”

“Most of it was good.”

“Most? Did you crack a tooth on a crueton? Think the wine would taste like juice and accidentally spat it out because it was like sour piss?”

“We went to the movies, idiot. And no. It was the end. When I talked about our next date our first group date, and found out that she has zero interest in you two.”

“Annnnd,” Ryan draws out when Michael doesn’t say anything more.

“And so there’s no second date.”

“Dude, why?”

Michael scowls. He shouldn’t have to explain this. To Lindsay, sure, but not to Ryan. “Because that’s how this works.”

“No, it’s really fucking not. We haven’t met Geoff, never mind dated him. I don’t goddamn court the people I sleep with, and I don’t lie about my boyfriends but trust me they have zero interest in seeing you.”

“That’s how it works for _me_ ,” Michael stresses. “I can’t be around someone if they don’t like the people I like. It would be like being at home again, everyone carefully only doing or saying things around designated people.”

“Your parents’ house.”

“Uh-”

“Not home again. You have a home, Gav and I have spare clothes there. It would be like your parents’ house. And I really don’t think it would be? But it’s your choice. It’s not like you have to have your own separate relationship because me and Gavin do. We’re all equal, but we don’t have to be exact.”

Michael knows that. That’s the whole point that Ryan seems to be missing, that Michael reacts differently to the idea of it. He doesn’t want it, and no amount of awesome monogamous-adjacent people are going to make Michael want to date in different collections. He agrees, even if Ryan doesn’t think he does. It’s the other part of what Saint Ryan’s lectured with a wise halo ‘round his head that Michael thinks is crap.

“You know what a home is? Some place where you don’t feel like everything’s going under. My apartment is a home like a night a week, whenever you’re both free. Other than that it’s the place where I remember that I have running water and groceries because I’m sucking my college fund dry. It’s the place where I can’t play video games because my XBox was a birthday present and they wouldn’t let me take it. So maybe you’re right and my parents house can’t be home again. But my apartment sure the hell isn’t.”

[Ryan responds by hugging his leg and resting his chin on Michael’s knee.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3240428/chapters/7059449) “It’s only a few more months until the semester’s over. Then I'll live off campus, we'll split the rent, you won't be alone. And Gav might not be able to join us, but you know he’ll be over every night. You just gotta make it til then.”

“My fucking bank account has to make it ‘til then,” he mutters.

They sit like that for a minute. Michael worms his fingers into Ryan’s luxurious hair -unlike himself, Ryan can afford separate conditioner- and watches the people around them. He’s pretty sure next class has started, but there’s no reduction in bodies. The only difference is that there are less students walking pointedly from one class to another, and more settling to do some homework in the sunshine. Guess that’s what happens at a university with people. Michael will never know, this vicariousness is the closest he’ll come. 

Ryan’s the one to break the cycle of comfort. He sits up straight, dislodging Michael’s hand as he does so. “So Gavin said you’re suspended.”

“I bet he didn’t say it like that,” Michael replies before he really thinks about what he’s saying. Ryan’s not the kind of guy to pad things, even though he’s got the acting skills to pull off sympathetic as fuck. If Gavin’s been rage-texting Ryan, Michael’s about to know.

Ryan doesn’t deny it. “No, not really. What happened?”

Michael temporarily avoids the question for something more important. He knows Ryan’s disappointed that neither of his boyfriends are going to get a higher education. Gavin’s a journeyman and Michael’s lint-filled-pockets broke, so Ryan gets the rationale, but they both know he hates it anyway. But has he really sunk so intellectually low in Ryan’s book that he’s not even surprised that Michael’s no longer attending class? Because Michael’s not fuckin’ _stupid_ , and Ryan better damn well know that. In sophomore year Michael had a fuckton of plans about college. It’s the universe’s fault, not his, that they fell through.

“So you knew and didn’t ask as soon as you saw me?”

“To be fair to me, I didn’t think you’d lead with you went on a date. I was prepared for a lot of things, but not that.”

Prepared for a lot of things? The hell? Michael’s a boyfriend making a few crappy decisions -from an outsider’s perspective at least- not a tornado that everyone gets warning time to nail down the shutters for. _Prepared_. The fuck. “What the hell does that mean? You and Gavin have been acting weird. Before I went on my kissing rampage, even.”

Ryan angles his body to look up into Michael’s face. “Do you want me to tell the truth? You’re gonna get pissed off.”

“Fuck it. Do it.”

“It’s because of the sex the other night. Sex like that has repercussions, including distrusting your partner, sometimes.”

Michael rolls his eyes. “I trust you and Gavin, don’t be a dickhead.”

“Usually yeah, but in the aftermath-”

Michael punches Ryan’s shoulder and cuts him off. “I always trust you assholes.”

“Then why were you acting out for attention instead of just telling us to focus on you? You should have known we would have.”

“That had nothing to do with it!”

“You want to explain it then? Because Gavin and I both-”

“I ate some hexed bread!” Michael bursts out. He shouldn’t. He fucking shouldn’t be talking about this. Ryan said he wouldn’t keep this from Gavin. But if he hears one goddamn more word about how kinky sex made him a lunatic tantrum having toddler he’s going to shoot himself in the face.

“Some shitty ass motherfucking indie bakery company makes fucking bullshit hexed bread. Or maybe it’s charmed and I probably didn’t read the label that’s right the fuck on it. Blind and stupid, brain made out of fuckin’ asparagus, that’s me! And if I eat the damn bread I kiss other people who have eaten it. Which, if I couldn’t keep goddamn count, thank the lord my fellow students have! I’ve oh so nicely been renamed 201. And I’m fucking suspended because the admin doesn’t care that I’ve been fucked so hard by life I’ve got a bleeding taint!”

“Great imagery there.”

“Shut the fuck up, Ryan,” he snaps.

Of course Ryan doesn’t. Instead he has to test the situation. “You didn’t tell Gavin you were hexed?”

“How the fuck could I?” Michael screams. He doesn’t remember jumping off the table but he’s on his feet, hands balled into fists at his side. “What the fuck would Gavin do? Would he doom all of Texas because he can’t stop retaliating revenge? Would he break up with me because I’m bullet through the brain ignorant about magic? Would he fuckin’ think I bought it on purpose to use his skill set as a kinky thrill out of spite because he never tells us dick? I just don’t know!”

Everyone in the vicinity is staring at him as his chest heaves for oxygen after the extended rant. Half of the studying students have put down their books or closed their laptops. Half the strolling students have stopped walking to watch the spectacle, the grand show of the melting down teenage boy. 

It’s the second time in twenty four hours Michael’s gathered a crowd. Well, what the fuck. Who cares? Anyone doesn’t like it, they can eat shit. Michael knew this was going to happen. He knew Ryan was going to ask questions, was going to make him talk. So he is. Ryan doesn’t look like he’s about to crawl in a hole and die of shame-by-association, and no one else matters.

Ryan nods. “Okay, yeah, I can see how Gavin’s out. But you went on a date instead of going to a clinic last night?”

“What fuckin’ money?” He wonders if his palms are bleeding from the pressure of his nails.

“I know you hate charity, but I could have loaned you-”

“I couldn’t have gone anyway,” Michael mutters. “I didn’t figure it out until this morning.”

“Seriously? So what makes you so sure that it is? A hex, that is. I mean, it sounds like a valid theory, but correlation isn’t always causation, right?”

Michael’s sure because it makes sense. Because he wouldn’t just kiss a metric fuckton of people for no reason. Because he felt compelled. Because humanity is shit and a bakery company would totally accidentally hex their shit and not recall it. Because he’s got a hunk of turd brain and might have not read a label in the process of buying groceries while happy for the first time in months. “Because I’m not fucking answering this! You should know this already! Why is everyone on the planet so goddamn retarded?”

Ryan holds his hands up. “You don’t know. It’s okay, you don’t have to answer that. We’ll figure it out later.”

Michael hates being placated. Placated and condescended to. Nothing makes him more angry. He’s taken care of himself for over a year now, he doesn’t need someone treating him like a baby. It’s infuriating.

Michael accelerates. He wordlessly screams, coating the sky with it. He does it a second time. Again and again, lungs emptying, his whole body trembling. It feels so good to be this angry. It clears his mind. Makes everything white and crisp and gleaming. 

And then that feeling intensifies too. The clarifying rage drops away and he’s just empty; numb and clear. He barely feels Ryan pulling him into his chest, easing him down to the grass so he can sit with his back against Ryan’s chest and Ryan’s arms crossed tightly over his chest. 

It takes a while to blink back into focus. 

The grass is very green, for something frequently trampled and growing in scorching sun. The university must have a groundskeeper. Michael squirms a little bit and Ryan tightens his hold.

“That means let go, you dickbutt.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I must have gotten it confused with the last five times you squirmed just to make sure I wouldn’t let go.”

“Rye,” someone admonishes. Michael looks around. There’s a guy sitting on the bench they were- a half hour ago? Longer? He’s eating candy out of a cellophane bag.

“I know, but he wouldn’t be comforted by sweet nothings.”

“Damn straight,” Michael agrees. He’s still not entirely sure what’s going on, but Ryan’s definitely right about that. Pet names are tools used for guilt, in Michael’s experience, and considering he’s a _guy_ , romance isn’t really his deal either.

“Okay. Looks like he’s back. I’m gonna take off.” The brunet stands and tucks his hand into his pocket. “Remember- BBC. Blood sugar, body temp, closeness.”

“Thanks Kdin,” Ryan replies to the bespectacled man. 

“Who the fuck’s that?” Michael asks, not really giving a crap if the guy’s out of earshot. He knows a lot of the people Ryan hangs out with, but Kdin’s not a face Michael’s seen or a name he’s heard. He’s not potentially jealous, it doesn’t work like that, but he is curious.

“Kdin.”

Michael rolls his eyes, then realises Ryan can’t see that. He knocks his head into Ryan’s shoulder with contempt as a replacement action. “Yeah, I’m not fuckin’ deaf. _Who_ though.”

Ryan shrugs evasively, gesture dragging Michael’s t-shirt with it a few inches. “Met him at a thing. We talked. He had some good advice. We’re friends now.”

“Okay, whatever.” It’s the crappiest explanation Michael’s heard in a while, but if Ryan wants to be like that Michael doesn’t feel like pressing for more. He got the arguing out of his system earlier. He doesn’t need it now. “Now if you could let the fuck go, that’d be sweet.”

“I’m just glad you got what you needed,” Ryan comments, drawing his legs back from Michael’s hips so he can stand.

Michael ignores the hand Ryan offers. He’s not eighty, he doesn’t need a boost. He does take the hoodie Ryan sloughs off though, plucks it straight out of his hand before Ryan can hook it into the bottom of his backpack strap. Michael’s cold for some reason, probably the lack of circulation from Ryan squeezing him so tightly. If Ryan’s not going to use it, he might as well. Besides it smells like him. Ryan always smells great. Who wouldn’t want to be cloaked in that?

“Yeah. Venting is great.”

Ryan nods. His voice is back to its normal vaguely amused cadence when he speaks again. “Sure, lets go with that.”

Michael’s the one to take the lead walking this time. He gets slightly lost getting from the courtyard to Ryan’s dorm, but once he’s there he doesn’t even need to ask for Ryan’s key. He knows the exact sequence of door thumping, knob jiggling, and handle pulling to get the machine to break down and let him in without a key. Probably bad, as far as campus security goes, but works just swell for Michael and his occasional need to crash a party. Maybe he’ll even tell someone when Ryan moves out and he no longer needs his own way in.

Ryan’s room is empty, and no different than the last time he and Gavin came over. Maybe a different set of sheets on the bed, but Michael wouldn’t count on it. Ryan’s kind of typical college student filthy.

“When’s Caleb coming back?”

Ryan kicks his shoes off into the locker/lamp table they have beside the door. Caleb’s are missing, giving Michael room to toss his in. “I mean, I assume not for a while.”

Well, good. That works out perfectly, in Michael’s opinion. “I want you to fuck me.”

“I don’t know if this is the best time for that.”

“What do you mean? You just said he probably wasn’t going to interrupt.”

“Not that.” Ryan looks down at the scuzzy carpet. His jeans are tight enough that Michael can see his fingers drumming on the case of his iPhone inside his pocket. “Uh, could you give me a second to text Kdin?”

“No! What the hell? No. Do you want to fuck or not?”

“Do _you_ want to fuck?”

Michael scowls at his older but apparently dumber boyfriend. “What the christ did I just say?”

“Okay then. If you’re sure.”

Ryan still seems a bit doubtful, so Michael does the favour of convincing him. He shimmies out of his clothing as quickly as he can, socks and skullcap included, and drops to his knees to get dick in his mouth. Even Ryan’s bullshit whatever psyching himself out head games can’t stand up to his cock halfway down Michael’s throat. Ryan gets erect, and then he gets enthusiastic, and then he gets close. Michael doesn’t stop sucking. Not until Ryan’s coming. Michael swallows as best as he’s learned how, and licks his lips for what spills.

Ryan half collapses onto the nearest bed when his knees give. It’s Caleb’s. Ryan’s bare ass is half on the guy’s pillow. Michael has to snicker. It’s practically a law. He also does a bit of collapsing of his own. Instead of staying on his knees Michael spreads his ankles and sits on the carpet between them. It’s a more comfortable position; he can stay that way until Ryan’s ready.

“Do you want me to return the favour?”

“No, I want you to fuck me.”

“Well, you made a tactical error then.”

Michael raises his eyebrows. “Did someone sneak into the room and amputate your fingers while I was gargling knob?”

Ryan looks down at him and shakes his head smile spreading over his face. “You’re such an asshole. You wanna keep kneeling, or you wanna get on the bed?”

“I can do both,” he snarks back. He knee-walks the few feet to Ryan’s bed then bends forward so his shoulders are on the mattress. Only when Michael’s situated does it occur to him that that’s not the reaction most people probably would have had.

He doesn’t have long to think about it though. Ryan nestles in behind him almost immediately, spent cock soft against Michael’s asscheek. Ryan’s hands are soft too, as they massage Michael’s ass, work his flesh. Face against the bed, Michael lets his body unwind. Each exhale comes from deeper in his lungs. Each inhale struggles through his half-mashed nose. The scent of his boyfriend is nearly as strong in the bedding as it was in the frequently resprayed with cologne zip up. It’s a turn on as much as it’s a comfort. Just like everything else it’s all about the context. 

Ryan’s fingers start to migrate. With each pass they go a little deeper into his crack, a little closer to his asshole. Michael doesn’t know if he should be feeling relaxed and content by the leisurely foreplay or if he should be driven up the wall with anticipation. It’s kind of both, as much as they’re opposing emotions. He’s eager, but he knows Ryan will get around to it, that he’ll make sure Michael enjoys his turn as much as Ryan enjoyed his.

“I’m snapchatting Gav, okay?”

“I don’t think he’ll care. He’s pissed at me.” It’s hard to be too morose when Ryan’s touching him like this, but it doesn’t take the facts of life away. The main fact being Gavin hasn’t texted him in over a day, hasn’t talked to him since outside the guidance counsellor’s office. It doesn’t take a genius to recognise that as grudge-anger.

“You can be pissed and still enjoy porn.”

That is true. Michael has intimate knowledge about that kind of intimate knowledge. And it’s not like he’s against being filmed in general. Fuck knows this wouldn’t be the first dick pic on someone’s phone. “Whatever. Go ahead.”

The first finger that Ryan glides into him makes Michael twist his head to the side. He’s no longer nose tip and chin to the mattress, he’s temple and jaw line. Ryan’s going achingly, beautifully slow, clearly in the mood to tease, and Michael knows he’s going to need the ability to breathe clearly.

Michael hears the mechanically unnecessary but operationally mandatory click of the iPhone’s shutter. “Already?”

“I didn’t say tableaux, I said porn. That implies multiple shots. Which means start at the beginning,” Ryan retorts.

“It’s a very good place to start,” Michael sings back, voice purposely warbly. He’s a terrible singer naturally, but hamming it up makes it more fun.

For a moment Michael feels the gap left by Gavin not being here. Ryan seems temporarily lost for a response, stuck between hauling their train back on the sexy tracks, and singing along. If Gavin was in the room he’d do one or the other, leaving Ryan the alternate. He’d probably grab Michael by the dick to remind him what they’re doing, to give Ryan some time to let his musical theatre skills shine. Alone Ryan has to choose what to do. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not like it’s the first time sex has been just a two-way. Three tight schedules makes for three-way impossibilities. Michael’s just got to hope it’s not this way from now on, that Gavin will get over broken promises and perceived slutty behaviour and join them again.

To distract himself from the sudden negative thoughts Ryan’s indecisiveness has brought on, Michael arches his ass even further out from the bold position he’s already in. “Come on Haywood. Fuck me like you mean it.”

“I’ll fuck you how I want to,” Ryan retorts.

Problem solved. Sex is back on track.

Sex is also half torture. Ryan’s fingering him slowly, taking an unfathomably long time, like this is some kind of hand fetish porn that requires a dozen zoom ins of his palm. By the second snick of the bottle top closing Michael’s alternating between panting heavily and biting his lip so he doesn’t say anything idiotic. Ryan knows that he loves him. If Michael says it during sex it’ll be just because they’re having sex, which makes it meaningless. He’s not saying it if it’s stupid.

Michael keeps waiting for the third finger. It’s standard operating procedure, isn’t it? Half a fist full of digits, some wiggling around, and then orgasm. Easy as ABC, 123. Easier than understanding the abstinence only sex ed all of Texas gets. Ryan however, doesn’t seem inclined. He just keeps doing what he’s doing; steady pressure, stretch, smooth rhythm. 

Michael’s orgasm takes longer to build this way than in some other activities. Every person on earth has their own set of kinks and methods, and slow teasing really isn’t Michael’s. That being said, sooner rather than later Michael is grinding his face against the bed and clenching around Ryan’s perfect goddamn fingers. He doesn’t even try to hide his ecstasy when Ryan leans over him to take a picture of his face. Gavin’s probably deleting without opening anyway.

Late night, stressful day, and orgasm hormones all hit at once. Completely not giving a crap about the spunk oozing down the side of the bed, Michael heaves himself up onto Ryan’s bed. He grabs the closest edge of fabric and turns over a few times until the blankets are cocooned around him, toes to eyebrows.

“I’ll be right back, okay?”

Michael’s answer is more of a yawn than anything. He hears the door open and close. It doesn’t seem like much time passes before it opens a second time, but then he’s not exactly watching Ryan’s old fashioned digital clock. He can only hope it’s Ryan or even Caleb, not some random thief testing doorknobs. Michael’s too exhausted to deal with someone that wants Ryan’s XBox.

The door closes and the footsteps get closer before Ryan’s bed slumps in the middle. Someone’s sitting on the edge of the mattress. Probably not Caleb then. Either Ryan or an extremely friendly thief. Michael still can’t be bothered to open his eyes. Even he if managed the struggle, he’d still only see lamplight filtered through orange fleece. Blankets over the head are the best, and nothing in the world could make him face the cold of the room at this point.

A hand rifles through his hair. _Ryan’s_ hand rifles through his hair, it’s a touch Michael recognises. His palm is warm on Michael’s scalp, and it’s the last step to making Michael fall asleep.

He wakes some time later. Not enough to burst out of the sheets and start his day anew , but enough for some of his senses to come online. Touch- blankets are still cocooned, if a bit more jumbled by his sleeping movements. Taste- fucking awful, frankly, thanks to the combo of drool and semen. Sight- no, fuck that, what kind of demon opens their eyes the moment they wake up? Hearing- the light clicking of Ryan on his phone.

“Who are you texting?”

“Kdin. It’s no big deal. Go back to sleep.”

Michael doesn’t mind if he does. He wriggles deeper into the bundle of fuzz, Ryan a steady wall beside him, and drifts off.

A hand on his back rouses Michael. “Wake up.”

“No,” he mutters.

“I let you sleep as long as you could but you have to get up now.”

Michael groans. This isn’t how wake ups are supposed to go. He has a routine. “Say something funny.”

“What?”

“Not funny,” Michael mutters into the pillow.

“That was me confused, not being a stand up comedian!”

“Not funny,” Michael repeats.

Ryan snorts. “Either sleep for five more minutes and smell like work, or go rinse off, but we have to go.”

Suspicious, Michael lifts half his face off Ryan’s pillow to inhale. Strawberry kiwi. Damn lube. He actually does smell like one of the smoothies he’d make. It’ll be worse than just blending in with the ingredients though, if he doesn’t shower. His underwear will stick to his ass the entire shift. It’ll be annoying as all hell.

“You win this round.”

Michael dresses in Ryan’s clothes to make it down the hallway to the communal showers. He has work clothes and regular clothes on him, but he doesn’t have spare underwear because why the fuck would he? It’s not like he’s in the habit of pissing himself. Even the trip down the hallway ends with Ryan’s briefs clinging to his crack. It’s both proof of hypothesis and fucking awful. Six hours like this would have been horrible. Five points to Ryan.

Michael spends about three seconds in the shower. Ryan’s got to go. Ryan’s got a very specific schedule to be majoring and minoring while every other student in his major doesn’t dare attempt it, and he’s _got to go_. There’s no time for revelatory brain realignment like Michael normally has during his post-sex shower.

To avoid resmearing the lube from Ryan’s underwear to his ass, Michael freeballs it down the hall. Ryan’s changed too. It’s probably the wardrobe for whatever he needs to do this evening. Ryan isn’t usually a turtleneck kind of guy.

“I can drive you like halfway. But then you have to catch the bus. Your store is too out of the way to my rehearsal.”

“That’s cool. Cool. Thanks.”

What Michael should really be grateful for, as it turns out, is that he’s a master of the bus system. Ryan drops him off at the wrong stop. Michael doesn’t say that he doesn’t recognise this part of the route, just gets out of the passenger seat when Ryan illegally idles. By the time Michael notes the string of numbers on the bus sign Ryan’s halfway down the street. He could bolt after him, shaking his arms enough that Ryan might notice the pedestrian lunatic, but what’s the point? He can figure out a different way to get to work.

Waiting for this one to come by Michael wants to text Ryan that not all bus stops are created equal. He doesn’t though. Michael can hold off from shitting on one person’s favours until he’s sure that’s not the only person on his side. And Ryan is, he knows. Ryan’s not the kind of guy that would have sex before a problem was resolved. He’s not built the way of compartmentalisation. Michael blew him and Ryan fingered him, so they’re fine. Gavin’s a different story. Gavin doesn’t place the same importance in sex, they had their first time on their first date. And as far as Michael knows, Gavin’s still super pissed. There’s no missed text on his phone saying otherwise. Michael’s going to need Ryan to help warm Gavin up. Ragging on Ryan isn’t the way to make it Ryan’s priority.

When Michael’s phone does vibrate his hopes soar for a second. Maybe Ryan got right on it, called Gavin as soon as Michael got out of the car. But it’s an unknown number. Michael opens it anyway. He’s seen shit on Tumblr; sometimes mis-sent messages can lead to funny conversations. 

**I’m not working tonight. For real. I didn’t switch my shift to avoid you so don’t get all paranoid. Hell, I even texted Granola Greg to get your number and suffered through half an hour of talk about being regular.**

Michael laughs. That’s oddly reassuring. Greg is one of those vegan assholes who lives to convert people to his healthy righteous diet. No one would put up with that unless there was a good reason. Lindsay must actually care.

**Sorry for bolting like a dick. Cliche as hell but friends?**

Lindsay’s reply comes back in fragments.

**The cliche is saying friends staying like that for two weeks and then getting back together.**

**Unless you change your entire life philosophy that’s not happening.**

**So yeah. Friends.**

By the time Michael arrives, having transferred onto other buses twice, it’s about fifty seconds to four. He bolts into Sweet Pulp, swipes the employee door, and jams his card into the reader milliseconds before he’s officially late. He shouts at Bryant that he’ll be just a second and runs to the staff bathroom to change into uniform as fast as humanly possible.

“I could have told you it was no big hurry,” the middle aged man says when Michael gets back out and onto the floor. With still damp, curly as hell hair that he can no longer hide, because beanies aren’t part of the Sweet Pulp look. “Apparently it’s been dead all day. Katie thought the stripmall’s hex might be invading us now.”

Michael shakes his head. “I’m not betting money on that. I’m not jinxing myself like that. I need this job.”

Bryant shrugs. “It’s a slow day. Not the end of the world. It gives you time to talk to your boyfriend, anyway.”

Michael jumps to attention at the word. There’s no reason for Ryan to be here, so it must be-

Once he makes eye contact with Gavin the teen gets out of his seat. Michael crosses his arms over his uniform shirt and doesn’t let Gavin’s uncharacteristic stone face unsettle him. He knew he wasn’t going to get anything friendlier. 

“So Ryan was right and the porn fixed everything,” Michael throws out as his opening gambit. It’s not going to work, unless Ryan actually _was_ right, but Michael can’t see it. Still, might as well start off with a joke.

Gavin makes a face. “Don’t flatter yourself, boi. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

Michael tilts his head and nods slowly, like he’s evaluating the comment. “True, true. You have seen my ass once or twice.”

Gavin doesn’t take that bait either. “I’ve been deployed.”

“Oh yeah?”

“But I was gonna come anyway, wasn’t I? Even if Ryan hadn’t called. Need to know what homework you’re supposed to do, right?”

So he was right. Ryan did immediately contact Gavin once Michael was out of the way. Not that it succeeded in solving all their problems. Whatever Ryan said, however he talked Gav into giving him a second chance, Gavin’s still unhappy.

“Looks like there’s a Joey’s Lunchbox smoothie. You want it?” Michael offers after checking the counter. They have to do this now, with Bryant watching and probably having to pause for customers, because if Gav walks out now he’s not coming back at ten. Gavin doesn’t have the patience for multiple second chances. A free snack isn’t reason enough for Gavin to stay if this gets ugly, but it’s their Sweet Pulp routine, and Michael doesn’t like the idea that things have changed enough that Gavin isn’t having a goddamn smoothie.

“The fuck is that?”

Normally Michael gets the question in more polite terms, but it’s not even the hundredth time he’s rattled it off. “Salted peanut butter banana oatmeal.”

“That has nothing to do with that title. Who has oatmeal for lunch? That’s minging.” 

Michael shrugs. “That’s probably why it was given back.”

Gavin thrusts out his arm. Michael gives him the cup and watches his face as he sucks the first sip up the straw. It’s hilarious. Gavin doesn’t quite gag and need to stop, but his face screws up like the time that they downed a bottle of Sourpuss doing shots because there was no mix. He swallows and mutters “ugh”, then jams the straw back in his mouth and continues. If it’s free it’s his to finish. Cheap bastard.

It’s pretty clear Gavin’s not making the first move. Understandable, Michael guesses. From Gav’s perspective, walking in the damn door was probably move enough. So it’s up to Michael. He’s got to say something, the question is from what angle to attack this bullshit drama without actually giving Gavin enough information to hang himself with.

“You didn’t text me back.”

“Well I was going to, but it was mean, so I didn’t.”

“What?” Michael asks. It’s not a ‘how could you’, it’s a demand for details. 

“You don’t-”

Michael interrupts. “I’m not some little bitch. You can tell me.”

Gavin heaves a sigh. Like Michael’s being unreasonable or something, wanting to know what Frequent Douchebag Gavin Free thinks is out of bounds. “I was going to say I’d put my foot up your arse if I didn’t know you wanted it.” 

“I don’t have a foot fetish.” Michael laughs it out. He might have a few kinks, but the hair or lack-thereof on someone’s toe knuckle just doesn’t do it for him.

“No, but you have a size kink.”

“That is a moderately low blow. It’s true, but it’s offensive more because you think it should be than because it is. Three out of five stars.”

“I don’t think anything. You’re the one going mental the next day.”

“I told Ryan earlier, and I’ll tell you now. Kissing all those people wasn’t some goddamn fucking backlash from having weird sex. That’s stupid.”

“You told Ryan _something_. I know that. He bloody told me I had to trust you had your reasons. Without telling me mongin’ anything, the tosser.” 

It’s insane how Ryan can throw them both under the bus at the same time. He told Gavin just enough to make it obvious that Michael’s hiding secrets, while at the same time not telling him enough to placate him. Ryan goddamn made it worse. Any particle of hope that Michael had upon seeing Gavin is fucking steamrolled over now. There’s no way Gav’s letting it go. There’s no way Michael can tell him. Fucking’ stalemate.

“I do have reasons. It wasn’t really the activism thing, I know you know that’s crap. But I can’t tell you.”

“That’s fucking top, Michael. Exactly what I wanted to hear.”

And here comes the part where Michael starts feeling irritated because Gavin’s pissy. Fantastic. Exactly what he needs right now, to get snippy. “I- Can you just not? Like don’t be pissed because I’m not telling you shit, because there are reasons.”

“Yeah, I’m sure there are,” Gavin bitches pointedly before taking an obnoxiously loud slurp of the smoothie. The smoothie he didn’t even _want_ , doesn’t even like the taste of. He doesn’t actually want the smoothie in his mouth, so he’s literally doing it only to be annoying.

“Oh fuck off Gavin. I know I didn’t tell you, but I told Ryan and Ryan told you it was good enough. You don’t trust either of your boyfriends opinions now?”

Gavin slams the empty smoothie cup on the counter hard enough that the cardboard caves in a bit. “You’re a completely daft pissbucket. We are not fighting about what you think we’re fighting about.”

“Okay? So what is it then.”

“If I tell you, you’ll say we’re not fighting about that, and then I’ll probably chuck a chair at you.”

Michael shrugs. Honestly, he doesn’t see much of a problem with it. There isn’t much that’ll break if Gavin really goes for it, besides maybe a blender, but they have ten million of those. And Bryant isn’t in the range of fire either, he retreated to the back at some point, Michael didn’t pay much attention to when. “Just tell me. Fight and done is always better than lingering bullshit. Even if it gets physical.”

Gavin crosses his arms and his tone changes from pissy to factual. “There’s stuff you want, or like, or don’t like. But you act like you don’t give a toss. And not in my kind of way, where if it wouldn’t affect a caveman I let it go. In this strong emancipated teenager way. And it always bungs you up.”

Well, Gavin’s right about one thing. That’s definitely not what Michael thought they were fighting about. “Strong’s important when you’re convincing a court you can take care of yourself.”

“Yeah, but you did that already.”

“So you want me to be all fragile and emotional?” Michael highly fucking doubts it. Gavin requires the least amount of maintenance possible to function. He nearly failed gym class because he hated changing. He’d decided that once a set of clothes were on they stayed on, too much hassle any other way. The amount of participation points he lost was ridiculous. There’s no goddamn way he wants to date someone high maintenance.

“Fuck no. I want you to admit you have more modes than snickering and pissed off.”

“I’ll try. I’ll fucking try.” Michael can’t imagine himself doing it, really, same as he can’t imagine Gavin actually wanting what he’s asking. But it’s a simple thing to promise, if he’s never going to get called on it. And an ultimately unfulfilled vow to be more emotional is so much better than how he thought this was going end. How can he not swear it?

“Good enough. But I swear, if you turn into a bloody mong again-”

“I just said I won’t, man. I don’t have a free one sitting around, but would you maybe like to buy a Williamsburg smoothie? It’s avocado and fortified goat’s milk. Rich in vitamin D, which has been proven to help with hearing loss, which apparently you have because you didn’t hear what I _just fucking said_!” 

Gavin laughs. “Pretty long set up for that joke, boi. Good punchline though, I guess.”

“It was like three sentences. Are you really that lazy that fucking talking is too much work?”

Gavin chooses to ignore the insult, as he always does. Cruelty rolls off Gav’s back like there’s an umbrella charm on it. “So you’re suspended for a week.”

“Sure the hell am,” Michael agrees, eyebrows slightly raised as he nods. He nearly asks if Gavin knew from the text, or if the facts had been spread around by the students in the know by then, but doesn’t. Even if the Victorias of the school throw a fit about it, they’ll be onto the next major drama by the time Michael gets back, so ultimately it doesn’t matter.

“Mr Watson wasn’t able to save you?”

“Mr Watson set it up.”

Gavin frowns dangerously. He pats the left pockets of his magicians jeans. “I can give him the ole-”

“No,” Michael replies instantly. Part of the role of being Gavin’s boyfriend is making sure there are a minimal amount of disasters. “I mean, I kinda want you to? But you shouldn’t. For one, I did do the exact thing he told me not to. Kinda brought it upon myself, as much as I fucking hate to admit it. Plus they’d suspect you immediately. Considering you threatened him yesterday with that exact fucking thing. Geoff would probably get called in and everything.”

Like Michael thought, listing that particular consequence gets Gav to back off. “You won’t feel betrayed if I don’t...”

“No. I don’t want you to. And you _know_ I don’t because I’m being revealing about my needs or whatever.”

“I’ll do it if you change your mind. You’re my boi.”

“Team Nice Dynamite,” Michael answers, hand out for a high five that Gavin heartily returns.

“So you making me that hipster smoothie or not?”

“You staying?”

“Yeah, for a while. As long as I can. I’ve been deployed, remember?”

“Yeah, but we’re done fighting.” They better be done. Michael can’t handle drawn out nastiness that’s neatly wrapped in pretty tissue only for the ribbon to come off when you least expect it. He suffered that for years, but he got out and he’s not doing it again. Fight and done, like he said. “And there’s no way you had time for your lesson after school. Unless you skipped.”

“Skipped to go directly to Geoff? Yeah, no. I’m contracted to just learn one thing a day. I’ll be home by eleven thirty, and Geoff will have picked an easy one. He’s top like that. And the deployment wasn’t just about the fight. We’ve got, like, a new protocol.”

“The hell’s that mean?”

Gavin shakes his head. Michael feels safe labelling it a vindictive smile before Gav even speaks. Sure enough, “you and Ryan’ve got your secrets. Me and Rye’ve got ours. Fair play.”

“Oh fuck you, asshole.”

“Look, a customer!” Gavin deflects, and as Michael makes the TripleBerry Squeeze Gavin goes back to the eat-in section. A few seconds later an audiobook is being played loud enough to fill the store. The obvious sign of Happy Boyfriend Gavin Free is even enough to bring Bryant back out onto the floor.

The evening only gets busier, proving Katie wrong. Thank fuck. The last thing in the world Michael needs -even less than to have ingested cursed bread- is to get laid off. For a while it’s bad enough that Bryant has to do cash with him, as Hemaadri comes out from the back to blend as much as he can.

It takes Michael a minute to place the newest walk-in’s face, but he gets it before the line propels the dude to the front. It’s the guy Michael kissed this morning. He’s cute, but that’s entirely beyond the point. Just because Mr Hipster T-Shirt is the kind of person Michael might have kissed on date doesn’t mean that it’s okay that he was forced to. No doubt the guy feels the same, considering he tracked Michael down for a face to face confrontation. At least he’s waiting until the line of customers dissipates rather than walking in flipping tables.

Even when Hipster T-Shirt gets to the font of the line -the only current customer not seated or on their way out, so almost suspiciously perfect timing- he doesn’t immediately start a scene. He crosses his arms, fingernails barely visible at the edge of the hoodie hem, and says “so you look upset, so you obviously recognise me.”

“Uh, fuckin’ _yeah_. For the record though, it’s half that, and half I think Gavin might murder you. He likes me in class so we can play footsie and shit. And I like him not fucking arrested by magicops. So maybe you should fuck off.”

Shit. Michael probably shouldn’t have said his name. Gavin’s coming over now. He must have heard it. This is bad. This is potentially really bad. Goddamn it. What is his fucking karma that he only gets two hours of decency before more drama with the potential to get hysterically violent descends on him like the spiked cockring of god? Did he blow up a school bus full of puppies or something?

Gavin doesn’t crowd in on the Latino. He stands well out of personal bubble range, actually. But that doesn’t mean shit. Michael’s seen Gavin cast spells from a distance before. All magicians can, probably thanks to one of the seeds/dusts/powders in their pockets. Or maybe not, maybe magic just works like that without needing additional components. How the fuck would Michael know? And with having declared Mr Watson off limits for hexing, Michael can easily see Gav putting his foot down here. Revenge against some, for lack of revenge against all.

“I get why you think you should be pissed. That’s what I wanted to clear up. I didn’t tell on you. I didn’t even know you were suspended until fourth period. We have sewing together and you weren’t there. I had to ask around. Sort of. Kind of. Not really. Everyone’s talking about it. I had to eavesdrop, I guess, is more accurate.”

That’s actually plausible. When Michael’s in textiles he’s focused mostly on keeping his irritated swearing to a minimum, not what his classmates are doing. His fellow students don’t like him, so why the fuck would he care about them? It’s completely possible that he’s heard this guy shout ‘here’ to a roll call every day for months and just instantly forgotten it as useless information.

“I dunno who the fuck did it, and it sucks dick if they did it on my behalf because I don’t want that shit. Who the fuck am I to stop your activism? Even if I was super against it I wouldn’t have stopped some live action Anonymous. Fuckin’ principle, right?”

“Even if?” Gav asks, his first contribution.

Hipster T-Shirt tilts his head and makes an amused kind of grimace. “Well yeah, no shit. Gay as hell. Suck that dick hard.”

“So you’re alright with some guy just kissing you?”

“Mainstream media tells me intense making out with strangers is only a matter of time once I get into a club.”

“Alright then. I’m going to kiss you in three-two-one-snog.”

Having not seen this turn of events coming from a mile away, Michael is first shocked as hell when Gavin goes the way of lazy retribution and kisses his own stranger. That quickly morphs into enjoyment though. Gavin’s really giving it all he’s got, and Michael knows what that’s like. Likes watching it as much as having the Gavin Free Experience himself.

“I’m Vavin. I mean Gavin.”

Michael lets out a cruel giggle. What a fuckin’ numbnuts, exciting himself enough that he can’t even talk.

“Ray. I mean Bay. No, wait, I said it the right way the first time.”

“You’re an asshole. The boyfriend should like that,” Gavin bitches.

Michael almost laughs a second time at the way Ray’s expression changes when he remembers that there’s a world bigger than the make-out he’s just experienced. His eyes flare like he’s a deer in headlights, it’s pretty funny.

“Ha ha ha,” he fake chuckles. “We’re all even now, I guess.” Ray’s eyes dart from Gavin to Michael, and Michael can see the teen is on the edge of panic. “The more activism the better, right? Please don’t hit me.”

“You’ve seen my face, right? And seen Timothy’s? Do I look like I’m a good puncher?” The entire left side of Michael’s face ranges from red to purple. It’s pretty strong proof that he’s not the aggressive maniac most of the student population thinks he is.

“I dunno. Maybe you get a rage bonus when you do the screaming thing. Like you level up.”

Michael smirks. “I like that. But do I look pissed right now?”

“No?” Ray hazards.

“Also we’re not entirely even,” Gavin starts. One exchanged look and Michael knows where this is going. Or at least where it could go. Where Gav’s willing for it to go, if Michael agrees. Michael agrees.

“I don’t-”

Ray is interrupted by Gavin grabbing him by the collar of the t-shirt and dragging him in with himself as he bends over the wide white laminate counter. Michael bridges the distance to jam his lips against his boyfriend’s. It’s only been a day -maybe a little bit more, but they definitely kissed in the library, even if Gavin wasn’t among the hundreds in the cafeteria, so hours at most- but as far as Michael’s concerned that’s about a day too long. He loves every moment he can touch either of his boys, even if they taste like peanut butter and smell like hair products.

“I’m glad you’re done fighting, but maybe save it for your lunch break?” Bryant offers timidly.

Gavin snorts against Michael’s lip, and Michael has to pull away to laugh himself. The peal goes for an extra second when he notices the way Ray’s reacting. He’s got a semi-boner, and his hand is clenching on top of where Gav’s still holding him.

“So, Ray. Here’s the deal. Everyone knows me and Gavvers are together. What no one’s figured out is our relationship’s more than that. The kind of more that lets me say if you stick around ‘til my next break, we could have a pretty fuckin’ sweet make out sesh.”

“We like you and me? Or we like you both and me?”

“Michael’s only into sharing,” Gavin informs him helpfully. Michael wonders if Gavin’s saying that to get what he wants in this moment, if he’s figured it out himself, or if that was one of the things Ryan told him earlier today. It could be any of the three. Gavin’s occasionally oddly perceptive, but he’s also good at manipulation.

“I am fuckin’ hella down.” 

Maybe it makes him a hypocrite, or some more generalised type of shitty to be willing to do this, to want this with a stranger when little more than twelve hours ago he was rejecting someone he knows and likes. Michael’s fine with being called out on that. He never said he wasn’t shitty. But there _is_ one major difference. Ray seems enthusiastic about doing something with them both, and Lindsay wasn’t into it. Since that’s the most important factor to Michael for expanding his sexual horizons, it matters.

“Awesome. Now the two of you fuck off over there while I do my damn job.”

They do, but sooner rather than later Michael makes an executive decision to skip dinner. He can eat the wrap Gavin went out and bought him when he got bored and needed to stretch his legs on the bus, or sneak bites when no customers are looking. But that half an hour of privacy can be much better used. And since he’s not using it to bridge the gap between meals, might as well take it now.

“I’m clocking out for dinnerbreak in two minutes. You two should go get in your car, I’ll be there in a sec.”

Ray looks at Gavin, who doesn’t look up from his iPhone game because he knows Michael’s not talking to him. Spurred from the non-response he turns back to Michael. “What, me? Dude, I bussed. I don’t have a license.”

“Christ, really?”

Well that fucking sucks ass. It’s not like there’s a skanky prostitute hotel anywhere nearby where Michael can pay for a half hour in a room. The lack of options sucks. Just because Gavin’s the kind of guy to excuse people so desperate to get off that they fuck behind a dumpster doesn’t mean Michael wants to be that guy.

“Do you have a staff bathroom?”

“Really?” he asks again. “White subway tile gets you off?”

“How is it worse than a parking lot? Unless you get off on people on the sidewalk watching.”

“Michael doesn’t have an exhibitonism kink. He just doesn’t care if people see,” Gavin explains, mock helpfully. It’s a different story than yesterday’s about him being an attention whore, but then, Gavin’s not pissed at him anymore.

Michael sighs. Oh, fuck it. He either wants this or he doesn’t, and if he does then he needs to stop being a pussy about it. “Hop the counter, quick, before anyone sees.”

Ray plants a hand on the recently wiped clean counter and vaults himself over it. He whisper-shouts “parkour!” as he does it, and ends with victory arms and hissed roar of a crowd of fans that demand the Russian judge give him ten out of ten.

Gavin’s technique is like he’s hoodsliding a car, back maintaining contact with the laminate as he slides. He doesn’t really stick the landing. Putting it mildly. In Russia the landing sticks him?

Michael takes a brief moment to laugh hysterically at them both before he continues to hustle them through the back. Bryant will look up from mopping the floor, see there’s no one at the counter and rush to man it if a customer comes in. Not the most responsible way of taking his lunch, but hey, senior staff. Unless he burns the building down he’s probably okay.

Thankfully, the bathroom doesn’t smell like it’s been used recently. Or maybe Gav did a quick charm on the room. Or a spell on their entire party so that their noses can’t smell for half an hour. Whatever the real answer, Michael is happy to drop to the floor and tell himself that Bryant washed it first. Ray copies him almost immediately. Gavin takes a second longer, glancing back and forth between the toilet and the floor a few times before finally sitting. They make more of a scalene triangle than an equilateral, at this point, but Michael pretty fuckin’ confident that’ll get better.

“Normally I pull the ‘their face in my hands’ move but your face is fucked up so I’m assuming it’ll hurt. Unless you’re into pain?” Ray jokes. 

Michael rolls his eyes. “Not into kinky shit.” 

He ignores Gavin’s fake as hell cough and doesn’t give Ray the chance to ask about it. Gavin -and Ryan- can think what they want. They don’t need to corrupt Ray’s mind with it.

Ray’s not lying. His default technique really must be capturing the head, because Ray’s got a hand on the unbruised side of Michael’s face, and the other curled around Michael’s neck. He’s not going anywhere. Which works out goddamn splendidly because he doesn’t want to go anywhere. It’s hot, doing this with Gavin watching and knowing how much Gav approves. 

Michael backs off slightly when Ray’s touch turns spasmodic. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out it’s because Gavin’s bored of being the spectator and is now nibbling at Ray’s ear. Not a particularly sensitive spot of Michael’s, but each to their own.

Michael crabwalks towards the wall and out of the way so he can observe the show he was just part of. Gavin, the complete genius that he sometimes is, keeps a thumb flicking Ray’s earlobe as he switches to full frontal making out. It’s hard to tell what Ray’s enjoying more; the flick of tender flesh or the tongue in his mouth.

He can’t stay away forever though. Michael slides in where he can and gets his mouth as close as he can to Ray and Gavin. They angle slightly to meet him without breaking contact with each other. His bruised face hurts to press so tightly against Gav’s cheekbone, but Michael’s not about to pull away now. Not when he’s got almost everything he wants centimetres from his eyes. It becomes a big sloppy mess of a kiss; objectively wet and gross, but fuck objective because it’s hot as hell.

It seems like seconds later there’s a knock on the door. “Dude, I get it,” Hemaadri shouts, “but your break’s been over for like five minutes. At least clock back in before continuing to get busy.”

“No way it’s been a half hour,” Gavin protests. Michael can see it though. Gavin’s lips are pressure red. His own are slick with three different flavours of saliva. That takes more than a minute to happen.

“I need to get back to work,” Michael answers. His legs are awkwardly folded, and it takes a second to wriggle the feeling back into them once he uses Ray’s shoulder to heave himself up.

Bryant doesn’t so much as side eye Michael when he rejoins him behind the counter. The man really is the most passive guy Michael’s ever met. Gavin and Ray use the door this time, and both go back to their shared table. There’s a retro mirrored clock on the wall, but it takes Ray putting a hand into his hoodie pocket for him to realise what time it is, and start swearing about how he has to go, right _now_ , fuck. 

“See you guys on Monday?” The question wards off any assumption that the panic is just an act, an exit strategy. Ray doesn’t want to leave, he just doesn’t want to be in trouble for breaking curfew, or whatever the problem actually is.

The question’s also stupid as hell, considering why Ray came to Sweet Pulp in the first place. Michael waits for the lightbulb with a sneering stare. It doesn’t take long.

“Oh shit, I mean just Gavin, I guess. But I will complain more. Try to get Tracy Karen on board with your martyrdom. Get the GSA all up in this bitch.”

“You didn’t rat me out, so it’s not your problem,” Michael replies. He didn’t think that many people were in the hallway when it happened, but you never know who’s a jock’s sycophant. It could have been anyone.

“Why do we have to wait?” Gavin asks.

Again, Michael knows where Gav’s going with this. Team Nice Dynamite might as well be Team Telepathic. “I work on Saturdays, but we could hang out after?”

“You like video games?”

“The fuck kind of asshole doesn’t like video games?” Michael demands.

“Assholes. Great, I’ll text you, bye.” And with that Ray’s sprinting out the door, and across the parking lot like a maniac.

“He doesn’t even have my number. Whatever. He obviously knows how to get here.” It’s not like Gavin and Ryan don’t already crash Michael’s work whenever they want, what’s one more?

“He’s got mine.” Gavin shrugs, then switches topic. “We should talk to Ryan.”

“I don’t think he’s going to answer.”

Fact number one for Ryan Haywood is that he doesn’t check his phone during rehearsals. Michael knows that, even if he can’t remember what play it is this time. He wants to say Death of a Salesman, but he knows it’s not. It’s just thanks to a crappy church production inflicted on him it’s the first play that comes to mind any time Michael has to think of one.

“Oh, he’ll answer,” Gavin says cheerfully, left hip propping him against the counter.

Gavin jams two fingers into one of the twenty tiny pockets running the length of his right leg. From it he takes a dime bag full of dark yellow seeds and sprinkles a few onto his phone. He picks up the phone palm down to hold the seeds against the screen and scrunches his eyelids shut. Then he loosens his grip, wipes it clean, and starts texting. 

From what Michael sees it’s nothing spectacular enough to get Ryan to reply, just him being annoying shit. Gavin types **hey** and sends the one word message about fifteen times in a row. Michael can’t see how it helps. Ryan will only turn off his phone. 

Then, just to prove Michael wrong, Ryan Facetimes. He doesn’t start with anything nice, just growls out, “what the hell did you do to my phone Gavin?”

“Nothing. Did it to mine. Any time I send a message starting with ‘hey’ it can’t be ignored or put on vibrate. Don’t worry, I won’t do it often.”

“You know I’m at rehearsal. What do you want?”

“Not just me. Michael too.” Gavin twists the phone to show all of Michael, rather than just the implication of him that Gav being in the smoothie shop proved. Michael makes a face at him, because why not?

Ryan huffs. “What does collective you want?”

Gavin pulls the phone back so he’s in the centre of the screen. Fine with Michael. He already had his big dramatic relationship conversation with Ryan for the day. Let Gav take this bullet.

“Do you want to date Ray?”

“Who the fuck is Ray?”

“This guy that me and Michael really like. I think we could all be lads.”

“Well I don’t fucking know. I’m free most of the weekend, we could hang out then.”

So fucking much for bullets. Michael can’t believe Gavin got off so easy. It makes him want to hit him. And there’s no reason not to, so as Gav’s confirming Saturday, Michael leans over and hits Gavin in the upper back.

“Michael!” Gavin whines, emotionally wounded.

“Great. Planned. Now you two have fun being assholes and don’t fucking text ‘hey’ again. I think Jon’s going to murder me as it is.”

“I promise he won’t cause your death,” Michael substitutes for goodbye before Ryan logs off. He’s known Gavin for years, he knows how to keep him entertained enough to leave Ryan alone.

***

Michael looks at the full sink of dishes. He doesn’t regret his midnight meal choice; it was spicy and filling and he was able to half the recipe so there are no leftovers getting less appetizing by the hour. But there’s no question that the meal involved utter carnage of cooking implements. A cutting board and knife for the tomatoes, and the juice still got on the counter. A grater destroyed on three of the four sides because he can never remember what size is the best for shredding cheese until he’s already picked the wrong one. The bottom of an already dirty bowl and the last clean one to drain the can of corn without a legit strainer. A frying pan for cooking the ground beef and a large spoon to mix it all into edibility.

All of the used tools are stacked haphazardly in the sink, the smeared freshly eaten plate of nachos on top of it all. It’s gross as hell, and there’s not a chance he can reuse any of the dishes again. He could wash them in the morning, but it’ll only make the dishes on top crustier, and the dishes on the bottom more slimy. Better to get it over with now. 

He tugs his phone out of his hoodie pocket and doesn’t hesitate a second before calling Ryan. Not calling last night could have fucked up more than he’d known until it was too late. He’s not fucking up in the same way twice.

“Hey,” Ryan answers after a single ring.

“Hey. Putting you on speaker so I can talk and do the dishes at the same time.”

“So I’m like the festive Mexican song while you sob, huh.”

“Not everyone will always get your Buffy references, man. One day someone’s gonna get confused as hell.”

“One day the human race will fail me, you’re right. Until then, it’s all monkey pants and it must be bunnies.”

Michael snorts and puts the phone on the counter, aiming for optimal distance between can-still-hear-Ryan and won’t-get-splashed. Then it’s time to shove his sleeves up past the elbow and turn on the water. No drain stopper because fuck that noise, it only makes everything more slippery and nasty. Just because he can handle it if he has to, unlike his brother, doesn’t mean he wants to.

“So how was rehersal?”

As Ryan lets out a healthy amount of bitching about his stupid fucking castmates, Michael works his way through his dishes. One day he’s going to have savings, and with those savings he’s going to have a goddamn dishwasher.

“So Gav said that Ray’s actually the guy you kissed this morning.”

“Yeah?” Michael draws out. He has a feeling this is going to go somewhere, but he’s not starting it until Ryan commits.

“You didn’t tell him kissing him the first time wasn’t your choice?”

“Dude, it’s fine. He doesn’t think it meant something, or anything. I think he thinks I’d make out with everyone in school if I was still there.”

“So this date isn’t a cover?”

Michael shakes his head, and then remembers he’s on the phone and actually answers. “He was cool to me, and he hung out with Gavin for over an hour without trying to crush his nutsack. Plus he’s a good kisser. If you like him, I think this could go places, maybe.”

“And what if I don’t? If we all hang out tomorrow and you and Gavin are both rapidly falling down the love chasm- _not_ in a dirty way, asshole, but I’m like ‘meh’. What happens then? Because Lindsay-”

Michael doesn’t know what to say, but he doesn’t want Ryan to keep talking either. “It’s different. That was different.”

“Is it?”

“Majority rules? I dunno, fuck. It just is. I feel good about this, okay? Don’t harsh my fucking vibe, man.”

“I’m not banging him if I can’t at least have a conversation with him,” Ryan warns.

 

“That’s what Lindsay said too! Why does everyone think I’m some sort of rapey puppeteer?”

“I don’t. I’m just telling you now. Forewarning, it might not go the way you want.”

“Yeah, or it could be fuckin’ great. And even if it doesn’t go all flowers and rainbows and shit? It’s still like the first choice I’ve made this week. It’s refreshing as fuck, and I’ll deal with how it works out when it works out.” Michael has to deal with everything, after all, no matter what it is. Might as well assign special meaning to the choices he gets to make.

“Just think about having what you want, even if it’s not what we all want, okay? You’re allowed to want your own things.”

Michael makes a putrid face at the magnetised knife rack in front of him. His fuckin’ boyfriends sometimes. “You really have been talking to Gav, huh?”

“Would you have told me about your fight and make up if I hadn’t gotten it from him? Yeah, you don’t have to answer that. I already know. Just, I want this to go well, but poly isn’t about faking it. It’s about everyone getting what they need, even if, and especially even if that’s not what the other person needs. So I’ll see you and Gav and him tomorrow, and I’ll love you both no matter what, and I love you now, and it’ll all be okay. Okay?”

“Team Crazy-Mad,” Michael answers. He knows how Ryan feels. It’s one of the things he can trust.

“Goodnight, then?”

“Goodnight.”

Dishes finally washed, Michael begins the process of drying them. Walking the first plate to its cupboard he smiles. Gavin’s happy, Ryan’s happy, Ray’s got potential, and he’s figured out his hex. Life’s back in control, and that feels pretty damn great.

**Author's Note:**

> Part Two in this series will be up soon!


End file.
